Monster Hunter Gensokyo
by Achariyth1
Summary: Girls, guns, monsters, and an ice fairy with a twitchy trigger finger. Inspired by Monster Hunter International.
1. Saturnalia

**Monster Hunter Gensokyo**

A Touhou fanfic inspired by Larry Correia's _Monster Hunter International _series

-Written by Achariyth.

**Disclaimer**: Touhou Project belongs to ZUN. While I haven't made this a true Touhou/MHI cross-over, enough MHI influence exists in the scenario that I will pull this fic if requested by representatives of ZUN, Larry Correia, or Baen Books and I also request that any other fansite that might post this work do the same.

* * *

><p><em>The time comes in every girl's life when she finds herself searching for the answer to one of life's little mysteries. In my case, what do you use to kill a giant armored zombie damnbeast?<em>

_Sure, you might think that I'm pulling your leg. I admit that I'm not going to tell you a sea story about killing a stampeding armored zombie damnbeast with a paper clip, household chemicals, and a rubber band. But Reimu does pay me to think about such things. After all, the time to find out you need a harpoon gun with an underslung chainsaw is before you need to cut your way out of the damnbeast's gullet, not while you are being digested. And of course, someone's got to build the thing. _

_Since Gensokyo is what it is, a child of 1800s Japan and all, that someone is me. My name is Nitori Kawashiro, and I am a Monster Hunter._

_Did I mention that I really love my job?_

* * *

><p>"Satyrs? Why did it have to be satyrs," I groaned. Marisa and Alice had just walked into the cluttered piles of machinery that made up my laboratory and informed me of the bad news.<p>

I hate the goat-legged lust demons. Sure, all they say they want is a drink, good food, and good companionship, but no village wanted to deal with the inevitable orgy or the fatal surprises nine months later when little demons literally burst from the swollen bellies of the impregnated. And, as a race, they have yet to learn that "No! Godsdammit!" really meant no. Basically, satyrs combine all the horrors of being pawed by drunken frat boys with the terror of Rosemary's Baby.

And the ultimate indignity for the young women they prey on? They're horrible in the sack, or so Suika says, and I'm prone to believe her. Actually, after they killed one of my classmates, I'm prone to killing them with fire and then scattering the ashes to the four winds. I hate them worse than the _lusca _that plague my people. At least sharktopus makes for good sushi when the mission's over.

"Well, it is spring. Maybe they got lost on the way to Cancun," Marisa said. She pawed through the piles of machinery. Like a magpie, she picked up anything that caught her attention, especially anything that caused loud, flashy explosions. Considering I'm in the business of loud, flashy explosions, if I didn't keep an eye on her, I'd find my workshop stripped bare.

The doll maker shrugged. She always carried around a chained leather-bound book. Like Marisa, I wanted to see what was inside the book from Makai. I'm sure I could make something awesome from the contents. Unlike the witch, though, I could wait patiently and not pester the doll master in the process.

Alice spoke as she made a slow orbit around my workbench, Shanghai in tow. "Some silly girl that should have known better than to wander around by herself stumbled into a pack of them last night. Fortunately, she slipped away before they could slip her out of her clothes. She told her father, who ran to the village council."

"Dad called me soon after," Marisa winced as she slipped something bulky into her pockets. Mr. Kirisame might have been on the village council, but Marisa was content to speak to him once a year, if that. She never explained why. "Anyway, Reimu's ecstatic. Do you know the bounty for just one satyr?"

Like most governments worldwide, the Japanese government paid bounties for specific dangerous monsters. When she found out about that, Reimu had finally married her love for solving incidents with her overwhelming desire to get paid.

"I don't know. One, maybe two hundred thousand yen?" I said, lifting a box of custom-made silver-tipped ammunition onto my workbench. I spilled a bag of various pistol and rifle magazines next to the box. Rounds rapidly disappeared into magazines as quickly as my fingers could move. "Hardly seems worth the ammunition."

No one completely understood why silver was so effective against evil. I've always wanted to learn why, but there's always some new weapon needing testing or another mission to go on. Of course, the fact that silver's involved makes any experiment I might do too expensive for Reimu's penny-pinching ways. Maybe one of these days…

"You should know Reimu better than that. Try ten times that," Alice said, watching as Shanghai grabbed a speed loader and a magazine. The doll quickly loaded the magazine and reached for another loader and magazine.

"That's convenient," I said, stacking sets of loaded magazines on the table. Alice always surprised me with what her dolls could do. I never expected the help, but I was grateful for it. Danmaku still had its place on our missions, if our prey was inclined to follow spell card rules at all. If not, heavy metal poisoning solved the problem. "So what's the plan?"

Hopefully, our fearless leader had an idea more complicated than see evil, kill evil, and get paid. Since her usual approach to solving incidents ran along the lines of beating the hell out of everyone in her path until someone aimed her towards the big boss, I wasn't holding my breath.

"You're not going to like it," Alice said, making a moue of disgust. "Grab your gear, I'll explain on the way.

"Okay," I said, walking toward where my Interceptor tactical combat armor vest hung on a wall next to an M-4 carbine and a half-dozen pistols. "Oh, Marisa?"

"Yes?" she said demurely. The witch ambled to the door. My eyes caught Alice's, and she moved to block the door.

"Empty your pockets," the doll master and I said in unison.

* * *

><p>I work for the Company. I think it is called Hakurei Security Resolutions, LLC, but as Alice handles all of our paperwork and no one calls it that, I'm not really sure. My paycheck's automatically deposited, so it's not like I have pay stubs to check.<p>

As mentioned earlier, we kill monsters. More accurately, half of us do. We currently have two teams: Team Reimu, which handles monsters, and Team Youmu, which handles spirits. I handle the technical support for both, but mainly shoot with Reimu, alongside Marisa, Sanae, and occasionally Alice, who, with her dolls, practically acts as a team of her own when she's not handling all the administrative work for the company.

Team Youmu is just as varied as Team Reimu. Sakuya and Reisen compete with each other for bounties and Youmu's attention, while Mima just relishes the chance to wreck things, people, and spirits, even if she has to get Youmu's permission first.

We're also breaking in a set of Newbie hunters, whom you'll meet soon.

We might not yet be the foremost hunters in Japan but we get plenty of business from both sides of the Hakurei border. That suits me just fine as an engineer. I get to keep up with what the humans consider state of the art in many fields and I get to bring it back to marry it to the cutting edge of Kappa magical technology. My sister engineers aren't so fortunate, and they beg to go with us. Most cannot make it past the first day of training, though.

Since I am what many would call a monster myself, you might wonder why I'd be a part of a group that kills monsters. It's simple, really. Many of the same creatures that would prey on humans aren't opposed to snacking on tengu, kappa, fairies, and youkai. Also, whenever humans are attacked, they tend to retaliate by indiscriminately slaughtering anything and everything that looks, sounds, or acts like what they encountered. So whenever a monster gets a sudden craving for human flesh, dozens more innocent monsters usually die as a result. It is in my own self-interest and preservation to eliminate those man-eaters before human mass hysteria levels my village and salts the earth where it used to lay.

Other creatures might be stronger, smarter, or fiercer, but no one holds a grudge like humans.

And did I mention all the cool toys I get to play with?

Anyway, the company got its start when Reimu learned of the bounty program and realized she could actually get paid to solve incidents. Her first mission, tracking down a giant mutated spider, netted her more than her previous two years of shrine offerings. After that, she stopped begging for donations at her shrine, hired on many of her friends that had helped her solve incidents, and took on as many jobs as possible.

Like this one.

* * *

><p>As I sat motionless in a fallow field, I reflected on the plan. Alice was right; the plan sucked.<p>

Reimu constantly pounded home one simple truth: knowing your monsters lets you kill them quicker. In this case, satyrs would drop everything to potentially bed a nymph. We didn't have a nymph, just a foul-tempered piece of ice fairy jailbait. As a hunter, you learned to make due with what you had. I just hated to use any hunter as bait, even one as loud as Cirno.

"Stop woolgathering, Rookie, and fix those straps," Reimu Hakurei said, scowling at Wriggle Nightbug. Tonight she had traded in her robes for utilities and tactical armor. How she found red and white armor was beyond me. Her orbs floated next to her, but she relied more on the M-4 carbine hanging from the tactical strap across her chest.

The other Newbie hunter rolled her eyes and tightened the straps holding Cirno's arms over her head. The girl had a good head on her shoulders, even if she tended to be flighty. Like the others, she wore tactical armor, although where and why she found that cape was beyond me.

"Let me go, Reimu!" Cirno yelled, squirming against the bonds pinning her against the scarecrow in the middle of the field. Her red face made for an interesting contrast with her blue dress. "Or when I get out of here, I'm going to shove this pole up your fat miko butt."

Marisa had dug up an age deceiving pill to aid Reimu's scheme. No longer did the ice fairy look like she was on the verge of adolescence. Now Cirno looked like a sixteen-year-old human girl with ice crystal wings. Normally, I'd expect that to be no big deal, but Reimu and Marisa shot daggers at the nymphet whenever she wasn't looking.

I'd be jealous myself, but she couldn't design inventions or draft blueprints worth a damn. Kappa boys loved a good engineer who was also good looking. Cirno couldn't build herself out of a wet paper sack.

I looked again at the ice fairy, if you could even call her that any more. Marisa had dressed her in Daisy Dukes and a thin white T-shirt tied high enough up on her body to accentuate long toned legs, a flat stomach on a waspish waist, and a bust that, while average elsewhere, still put most of the girls from Gensokyo to shame. I resolved to hit the ab machine about a couple hundred times more than I normally did.

"Are you sure we can't gag her?" Marisa Kirisame said, cradling an automatic Saiga 12-guage in her arms. Her dress might have been traded in for midnight armor, but the witch's hat always remained. Like most of the team, the sight of that witch with a street howitzer unnerved me. Reimu let it go, however, mostly because it kept Marisa from trying to find anything bigger.

"It'd defeat the purpose," Reimu said, glaring at the ice fairy. "And I'm not fat."

"Come on, Rookie, a little solidarity here?" the fairy said to Wriggle.

"Stuff it, Newbie," she said, ratcheting a wrist strap tighter than she needed to.

"If it makes you feel any better, I would have rather used Sanae," Reimu said. "But satyrs have a thing for nymphs."

Sure, satyrs would chase nymphs all night long, but if Reimu were deep in her cups, she'd admit that she was saving Sanae for a tentacle monster. Maybe that's why Sanae suddenly had religious duties she had to attend to tonight.

"Try not to spook too early," Marisa said, eyeing the horizon. "You wouldn't want to scare your suitors away."

"Like you do?" Cirno said. She sounded the satyr's universal mating call in a high pitched and slurred imitation of Marisa. "I'm soooooo drunk! Woo-HOO!"

"I don't sound like that," Marisa said, pouting.

"Yes, you do," Reimu muttered. She cleared her throated and pointed to the treeline that we had prepared as a fighting position. "Come on, back to your places. Her guests should arrive soon."

* * *

><p>They came at dusk, just before Marisa and Wriggle finished shouting catcalls until their throats grew hoarse. In the treeline opposite to us, we could see the occasional flash of goatmen with well-muscled human torsos and furry goat legs wearing nothing but thick coarse fur to cover their obscene masculinity.<p>

Cirno flashed one look at the leader and shrieked like a horror movie scream queen, struggling against the bonds keeping her against the scarecrow. As she did, the four of us settled our cheeks against the stocks of our weapons and waited.

"She's pretty good at that," Wriggle said, shaking her head. She held out her hand, and a dozen fireflies flew away, spreading out all over the field. Not that they gave her light, but an insect youkai was practically a goddess in the insect world. I figured that they told her what they say somehow, but I don't speak firefly, and Wriggle loves her secrets.

"Almost makes you think she's really scared," I said. Not that Cirno would ever admit to being scared, being the self-professed Strongest and all.

"She just needs to keep it together for a few more minutes," Reimu said. "We won't get our bonus if we don't get them all."

The satyrs, about a dozen horny lust-crazed demons in total, stepped out of the woodline. Their leader pointed at what he thought was the town's offering, and the field filled with wolf whistles, all too frank assessments of Cirno's body, and absolutely vile suggestions for interpersonal relations.

I pulled my earplugs from my armor and slipped them into my ears. It helped block out the goatmen's bleating, but not by much.

The leader sauntered up to the scarecrow, calling out lewd suggestion that caused the blood to drain from Cirno's face. He reached out to grab a handful of ice fairy, but stopped suddenly as a Colt 1911 pistol jammed itself into his ribs.

"That's no way to talk to a lady," Cirno said. Damn, but that fairy moved fast. She had slipped her bonds, retrieved the pistol hidden inside of the scarecrow, and stepped away in the blink of an eye. Maybe she had been taking lessons from Sakuya.

What? Did you really think we'd actually leave her out there alone without a way to protect herself?

The pistol's hammer fell. Black ichor sprayed out of the demon's back as silver-tipped lead perforated and tumbled through infernal flesh. Cirno's finger spasmed on the trigger until the slide locked back. The last of twenty rounds flew out of the mush that was once the leader's abdomen. He clutched his gut, collapsing wordlessly.

The rest of his pack jeered at the fallen leader before whooping and hollering at Cirno. Only lust demons would mistake a belly full of lead for playing hard to get.

My sights centered on one I labeled One Horn, for obvious reasons.

"Not yet," Reimu cautioned, not even raising her head off her weapon. "You might hit her."

"We never had to worry about overpenetration when we used danmaku," Marisa complained. Not that the witch tended to worry about collateral damage, but we all had to adjust to the fact that unlike danmaku, bullets almost always hit things beyond their targets. Sure, Cirno might be a fairy, but if we hit her by accident, she'd make our lives a living frozen hell once revived.

The remaining satyrs charged the ice fairy, whipped into a frenzy by lust, blood, and the desire to dominate. Cirno threw her empty pistol at the nearest, before frost shimmered in her hands. The closest satyr fell to his knees like a pole-axed steer, an oversized ice mallet lodged in his fractured skull.

Marisa's age bending magic had turned an unassuming mischievous tomboy ice fairy into a raging _tsundere _ice queen. And by the way she spun that hammer about and through any satyr in her reach; she was in full _tsun-tsun _mode.

I hated to consider the alternative. If those were love taps, I'd hate to see the nymphet strike in anger.

The butt of the hammer slammed thrice into a satyr's solar plexus before the heavy mallet head shattered on the demon's skull. Cirno screamed and threw the remains into another satyr, pinning it to the grounds. Ice shards flew across the field as she spun frantically, imbedding inches deep in whatever unfortunate object that crossed their path.

"Watch it!" I shouted, rolling out of the way of a shard that landed where my head once was.

"Get out of there!" Reimu shouted. She looked over at me and scowled, tapping the side of her carbine with her finger trigger. I looked down and growled, taking my finger off the trigger. I must have done that while I was rolling. Having a finger rest on the trigger at any time other than in the act of shooting was a cardinal sin.

Out in the field, the grown-up ice fairy spun to a halt, teetering precariously as satyrs encircled her, laughing

Marisa swore, pulling out spell cards from her belt and slipping them into a mounted clip on the side of her shotgun. "We need a long gunner."

I agreed with her. A sniper would help tremendously, but only Reisen had the marksmanship skills worthy of that title, and Team Youmu was off on a mission tonight.

"She's too busy hitting on Youmu," Reimu said, peering down the sights of her carbine. Youmu's little love triangle had become a near constant source of gossip for our team. "Dammit! I don't have a shot."

"500 yen on Sakuya," Wriggle said, lobbing a smoke bomb. Green show billowed from the small canister that landed at Cirno's feet.

Somehow, in all her frantic attempts to regain her balance, Cirno had evaded the groping hands and demonic tackles. The fairy leapt out of the smoke and into the air, screaming as she dove towards our hiding spot. "LETTY!"

She flew past us, crashing headfirst into an open blue box hidden in the brush. Oaths and the clang of metal on metal escaped her hiding place.

Fortunately for Cirno, but unfortunately for the company's bottom line, Wriggle's smoke bomb confused Cirno's suitors. The satyrs yelled at each other, with the cry of "Where did that feisty honey go?" being the mildest by far.

"They'll get away!" I hissed. My sights filled with nothing but green smoke. Sure, we could have flooded the smoke with indiscriminate fire, but there was no guarantee we'd hit what we wanted, and bullets always landed somewhere, usually some place unwanted. Besides, Reimu trained us to be stingy with our fire. The money to buy silver-tipped bullets didn't grow on trees, after all.

"Does anyone have a shot?" Reimu said. The barrel of her carbine wavered through her assigned field of fire. Marisa and Wriggle both yelled, "No!"

"Oh, boys," Cirno purred, dragging something long and heavy out from the box, a metal linked belt draped over her shoulder. "I've got something to show you. That is, if you're all real men."

How the hell did the girl with a century long childhood sound so seductive?

Raucous cheers sounded from behind the smoke. The more adventurous called out suggestions as to what Cirno could show them; those suggestions died in the sound of angry bees.

I never understood the longstanding tradition of giving the smallest members of the team the heaviest weapons, but Cirno had taken to her mini-cannon with all the fiery passion of, say, satyrs toward nymphs. Wild horses couldn't drag Cirno away, and believed me, we tried. Even the combined firepower of Marisa, Yuuka, and Mima all chain casting Final Sparks could not pry the cannon out of Cirno's hands in the moments after she had ecstatically vaporized an entire treeline. She had even named it Letty after her oldest friend, although I knew the snow-woman would be having words with her once she woke up.

"She's a hunter!" rasped one satyr.

Another laughed harshly. "So what? That'll make it more fun when we catch her. You bring friends, sweet cheeks?"

A laser-like stream of tracers lashed out across the field in response, burning holes through the billowing clouds of smoke.

Dark figures appeared, baying for what I hoped was only blood. As the demons rushed towards us, my carbine recoiled in my hands before I realized I had pulled the trigger.

Wriggle and Reimu added their fire to the uproar. _Clickety-boom clickety-boom _punctuated the cacophony as Marisa manually cycled her automatic Saiga shotgun. The witch just did not maintain her gear.

Silver streaked across the shrinking gap, punching through limbs and bodies. Satyrs dropped but regenerating demons stood up moments afterwards. Still, a lucky head shot or two thinned the pack, and a satyr practically evaporated when Letty's tracer stream touched it.

Demonic stench overwhelmed the odor of spent cordite. I gagged. Why in the world would any girl let something that smelled so foul anywhere near her, much less touch her?

Old One Horn towered suddenly before me. It doesn't take long for humanoids to run 75 meters. I raised my carbine, fired one shot, and swore as the bolt locked to the rear, empty. I tossed aside my carbine, the tactical strap keeping it close to my armor's chest plate.

"I just love getting a girl out of uniform," he purred in a low Barry White-like voice. He lunged at me, his corded muscled bulging. I slid a _tanto _knife from my belt, sidestepped his grasping arms, and buried the blade up to its handle in his chest. His eyes bulged as I worked the blade back and forth, seeking his great black heart.

Two hands grabbed my shoulders in what felt like a vice grip, and some Thing yanked me backwards off my feet. I stared upwards, getting a nasty up-the-kilt view of a curly-haired satyr. Curly grinned lasciviously as he tore open the Velcro binding my armor together.

I shrieked. Lying on my back surrounded by lust demons was a nightmare come true. One Horn ripped my knife from his chest and reached for my now kicking legs. And the nightmare looked like it was only growing worse.

I reached down by my thigh and drew my backup pistol, a lovingly maintained Colt 1911. I didn't even need to aim; the beastman flooded my field of view. I pulsed the trigger, walking fire from One Horn's thigh up to his forehead before the back of his skull shattered out and away from me.

Curly snarled, seizing my wrist and slamming it against the ground until I dropped the pistol. A cloven hoof stepped down on my shoulder, pinning me to the ground.

"I will take my time making you mine," he hissed, kneeling down until I could smell his hot, fetid breath.

"Aw, but I thought you were here for me."

Curly froze, clutching his gurgling throat as a leaf-shaped blade of ice slipped through his fingers. Ichor rolled down from his neck in rivers, right into my face.

I coughed, spitting gore. Unfortunately, my mouth was wide open when arterial ichor showered my entire body. I squirmed, turning to the side only to see Curly's open-mouthed head bounce away. A heavy pressure crushed my into the earth.

"Are you okay?" Cirno asked. She dropped a stained ice sword by her feet before rolling Curly's lifeless body off of me. She pulled on my armor, trying to stand me up on my feet, but I spilled out from it. I sighed, trying to wipe my face clean as I rolled to my feet, my backup-backup piece in my free hand.

Further down the field, a satyr reached into the haze surrounding Wriggle. Something like smoke gathered around his arm. He screamed, pulling back a bony stump gnawed clean by the insect queen's mites. Marisa and Reimu stood back to back, knives flashing as they cut through air and monster flesh; a trio of headless bodies crumpled at their feet and another trio of monsters pawing at them. All in all, seven satyrs lay on the ground dead.

"Look out!" Cirno yelled. I looked up, and leapt out of the way of a charging beastman. And now would be the time to mention Nitori's First Rule of Combat:

Don't Stop to Count the Bodies.

I felt the chill as a wall of frost flew by, stopping the rampaging lust demon in its tracks as the frost crystallized into a thick pillar of ice.

Cirno looked at her hands in amazement, a wide smile lighting up her face. "I can freeze the whole world!"

I shuddered at the thought, even though the engineering part of my mind pointed out that she'd be a couple magnitudes short of her goal. Hopefully, there would be time to talk her out of it later. I walked up to the pillar, standing behind the frozen demon and waited.

Cirno smiled evilly, and the ice by the goatman's neck thinned. Placing the barrel of my .38 against the base of the satyr's skull, I took care to cover the point where the brain met the brainstem and pulled the trigger. The inside of the ice column flooded with black gore.

"Enough of this," Reimu shouted, pulling a glowing card from a pouch on her armor. "Last Word: Fantasy Heaven!"

Seven Yin-Yang orbs spun around her waist in an ever-widening circle, bludgeoning anything unfortunate enough to stand in the way. Cirno tackled me to the ground. I felt the strong wind of the orbs passing overhead as Cirno and I hugged the earth. The ice pillar shattered, spraying frozen ichor all over us. The orbs then rushed back into her hand.

"Damn it, Red, warn us next time!" Marisa bellowed. She stood up, shaking mud and blood off her armor.

"Are they all dead?" Wriggle said. She remained in the prone, training her carbine on the nearest body. "Is the crazy priestess going to flatten everything again?"

"Sanae's not here," Reimu growled.

"She's the sane one," Wriggle muttered.

"Anyway, I'm not sure," the team leader said, glowering at the firefly. "But there's a way to find out."

I sighed, rolling my eyes as I retrieved my fallen carbine. Turning towards Cirno, I said, "I'll stake, you chop."

* * *

><p>Every job has some task no one wants to do. In this case, it's decapitating just under a dozen demons hopefully cooling to room temperature.<p>

It's necessary but nasty work. Evil cheats worse than Reimu on poker night and you don't want to turn around to find the demon that you just sprayed all over the walls suddenly lurking behind you waiting to eat your brain. Fortunately, not very many creatures could survive decapitation. For those that can, there's fire, and lots of it.

Unfortunately, that meant using something thick and heavy to sever muscle, tendon, and bone while dodging as much of the spray as possible. And the operative word is "chop." Sawing or slicing just prolongs the entire gory ordeal.

Don't ask about my first day of hunter training. Just don't.

So thank the gods for Newbies. I'd rather spend the time getting ichor out of my stained and dripping armor…

…And hair…and clothes…and….

I groaned as I rammed the last stake home through the satyr's heart. The ichor was already starting to set on my clothes. If I couldn't find a hose soon, I'd smell drunken frat-goat on my equipment for months.

Staking might seem like overkill, but it's often the only way to get powerful monsters to stop trying to kill you long enough to lop off their heads. By the way, a little safety tip for those would-be hunters out there; don't wave stakes or talk about them in front of the Scarlet sisters. Taunting master vampires is a great way to commit suicide, if you are fortunate enough to die.

The final head rolled away. Cirno melted the oversized crescent-bladed axe in her hands and stepped away. Somehow, that beauty-queen had avoided being covered in gore. I guess there's some benefit in the ability to freeze anything.

"Good job, Rookie," Marisa said, walking up to the ice nymph and handing her a water bottle. "Here, I'm sure you're thirsty."

"Thanks!" Cirno grabbed the bottle and gulped down the drink in long pulls. Marisa and Reimu watched her nervously as they walked over by me. Meanwhile, Wriggle was cleaning up the bodies using huge clouds of her flesh eating insect friends.

"I thought you said this would work," Reimu whispered. "She's not changing back."

"Relax, it'll take a little time," Marisa said, leaning against a tree. She glowered at the back of the ice youkai.

"How much longer?" Reimu asked.

"She seems more powerful now," I said, wiping gore and blood off of, well, everything.

"I'm not worried about that," Reimu hissed. She pointed to where the nymphet had silhouetted herself, the curves of her hips, her waist, and her bust framed prominently against the fading sun. "I'm worried about _that_."

"You do realize she's going to look like that for decades," Marisa said, scowling. "I didn't do all that work to kill satyrs just to release a teen tsundere ten on the world."

"That antidote better work!" Reimu demanded, her hands against her hips.

* * *

><p>Sure enough, it didn't. The way Marisa later described it, after I had taken a three-hour shower and several shots of cucumber schnapps to drown away the smell and taste of satyr ichor, magic has a mind of its own, especially when dealing with beings made of living magic like fairies. I guess Cirno thought it was time to grow up and out.<p>

Reimu and Marisa's jealousy aside, the night still was quite profitable. From "what's that sound" to "thank the gods that's over" had taken maybe ten minutes. In that time, we killed fifteen satyrs. Priced at two million yen apiece, and accounting for the various ways the bounty would be spread throughout the company, my personal take from tonight's little adventure would be three million yen. Not a bad haul for ten minutes of work helping make the world a better place. Plus tomorrow I get to upgrade Marisa's shotgun and Cirno's Letty, as well as work on any number of new monster killing devices.

Is it any wonder why I love my job?

**Author's notes:**

**I've always wondered what would happen if Reimu realized she could get paid for resolving incidents, but the form had eluded me for a while. It wasn't until a little writing experiment snowballed that I had a story that flowed. If the demand exists, either by readers or the muse, I can see additional stories in the future.**


	2. Mirror

**Monster Hunter Gensokyo: Mirror**

A Touhou fanfic written by Achariyth.

**Disclaimer**: Touhou Project belongs to ZUN. While this is not a true Touhou/MHI cross-over, enough MHI influence exists in the scenario that I will pull this fic if requested by representatives of ZUN, Larry Correia, or Baen Books and I also request that any other fansite that might post this work do the same.

* * *

><p>The Bell 430 helicopter rolled sharply onto its side, dropping 100 meters in seconds before the pilot leveled out into normal flight. I shrieked as my stomach jumped into my throat, and then laughed hysterically, a wide smile on my face. From my girlish scream, no one would have suspected that I, Nitori Kawashiro, was a Monster Hunter.<p>

Sure, I have flown before, but always under my own power, never under someone else's control like this. So far, there's nothing like a good helicopter ride to get the heart pumping faster. Before we took off, the pilot compared it to a roller coaster, whatever that might be. I'd like to take one apart to see how they work, but the flight engineer tackled me before I could get anywhere near the helicopter with my tools.

Next to me in the helicopter's cabin, Sanae Kochiya, my partner and team leader, held a hand over her mouth. Her skin matched the green of her hair, and she pawed at the back of the seat in front of her. The wind priestess groaned, swallowing before a coughing fit took her.

I patched myself into the closed circuit intercom using a transceiver headset I had kludged together in the moments before the pilots' wild ride.

"You hear the blue-haired one that time? I tell you, this bird revs more that just her motor, if you know what I mean," the pilot said. I rolled my eyes.

"Whatever. Look, if her friend blows chunks all over the cabin, you're cleaning it up, not me," the copilot said.

"If I can get the blue one by herself for a while, it'd be worth it," the pilot continued.

"Frankly, neither of you are my type," I said, keying the makeshift microphone. Like most kappa girls, I dated solely within my own species.

The pilot and copilot swore in surprise. The passenger's cabin normally did not have access to the closed intercom circuit. "How long have you been on the net?" the pilot stammered.

"Long enough to wonder whether or not I should be flattered or disgusted," I replied. "But I'll give you a chance to redeem yourself. What can you tell us about Tsukishima? And, please, use the open intercom so that my partner can hear."

Sanae and I both work for the Company, Gensokyo's premiere monster eradication team servicing both sides of the boundary. We're still pretty new compared to more established firms, but our reputation has grown to where we recently added commercial contracts to our normal monster bounty work. Our boss, Reimu Hakurei, loves getting paid for her work for a change, not that anyone has told her how to handle enough money to buy a small island chain.

As the copilot settled into the five hundred yen tour, I reflected on the current case.

An international satellite communications consortium, Pacifisat, had been plagued by frequent unexplainable equipment failures inside its Earth-based communication station. Normally, that would be an issue for maintenance, but most of the failures were declared as cleared before isolation. That's technician speak for "it fixed itself before we could find out what went wrong." However, shift workers started reporting strange shadows and laughter in the moments before equipment broke. Pacifisat had ruled out industrial espionage, as the Tsukishima site was a three-hour helicopter flight southeast of Japan. No one knew what to make of the shadows except for an old WWII veteran on the janitorial staff who claimed to recognize the telltale signs of a gremlin. Within thirty minutes of Pacifisat's phone call to Alice, the Company's receptionist, Sanae and I were on our way to the heliport.

"Wait," I said, keying the mike again. Something the copilot said interrupted my musing. "What did you just say?"

"Tsukishima used to be home to an old American emergency airfield," the copilot repeated. "There are even old B-29 wrecks off shore."

"If I never have to hear of another aircraft again-" Sanae groaned. Her eyes widened and she noisily filled her airsickness bag.

"Are you going to be okay?" I asked her, handing Sanae my empty airsickness bag.

"I will be when we get down," Sanae said, taking the bag from me. "I swear Reimu hates me."

Actually, Reimu specifically sent the two of us for two reasons. First, she trusted us not to break stuff. Satellite communications equipment is expensive, and one stray bullet means the difference between Pacifisat paying us and us paying heavy penalties to Pacifisat. Second, the company could only spare the two of us. Reimu had rallied her team, Youmu's team, and Alice with her dolls to chase down a creature known only as a Hidebehind; a creature so fast that no one living had seen it, just the bodies it left behind.

Our little milk run lacked the glamour of Reimu's mission. Sanae resented that, thinking that Reimu did not trust her for anything other than rookie assignments. However, if Reimu didn't trust her, I'd be in charge and not the wind priestess.

Tsukishima Island appeared on the horizon. We orbited the island once, before settling onto the final approach to the heliport on the north end of the diamond shaped island. The satellite communications facility, parabolic antennas and all, lay at the south corner, with the apartments, gymnasium, and dining hall on the east corner of the diamond. The old American emergency landing field ran from the north to the west, where the B-29 wrecks our copilot rambled about rested.

The Bell 430 settled lightly upon the ground, its rotors slowly winding to a stop. The door opened, and Sanae spilled out of the aircraft and onto her hands and knees. She kissed the tarmac beneath her.

"Oh, thank Kanako," she gasped between kisses.

I stepped out of the helicopter, pointedly ignoring the pilot's proffered hand. He'd get points for persistence, but little more. I dragged a heavy sea duffel from the passenger's seat behind my own.

"Ms. Kochiya, Ms. Kawashiro?" a melodic feminine voice called out. Sanae raised her head from her tender ministrations to the earth, rose blossoming in her cheeks.

I heaved the heavy duffel onto my shoulders and turned around. "Call me Nitori."

"Ms. Kawashiro, is it?" the speaker said. A coldly elegant brunette in her mid-thirties, she wore a burgundy pantsuit. She stepped towards us, her high heels clacking against the concrete. "A word of advice, you do not want to be too familiar here."

I blinked in surprise. Sanae finally stood, brushing the dust off her skirt. "And you are?" she asked, holding her hand out.

"Call me Ms. Jones," the businesswoman said. I tried to place her accent, but it was neither American nor Australian. Daintily grasping Sanae's hand, Ms. Jones glowered, all grace leaving her voice. "And I'm on my way to the poorhouse if you two don't do something about that thing. It just killed our air conditioning."

Sanae turned towards me, staring blankly as she mouthed, "What?"

I'd fill Sanae in on the situation in private, but the simple explanation for Ms. Jones's worries is thus; power creates heat and heat destroys electronics. Sending signals into space requires a lot of power, so no air conditioning meant that Tsukishima can't transmit and can't make money. Considering that Pacifisat relayed important trans-Pacific financial links between America and Japan, not only were they losing money, but they could potentially lose customers if the links weren't restored quickly.

The wind priestess recovered quickly. "We'll get started right away. But first, do you have some place we can change?"

* * *

><p>Ms. Jones had led us to a small locker room at the edge of the satellite communications facility. Without air conditioning, the room was hot and stuffy, but it was isolated enough that we could stage our operations without either interruption or lonely and curious workers pawing through our stuff in the hopes of learning our bra sizes. (Ms. Jones had warned us about the staff.) I armed a military-strength pepper resin bottle on top of my duffel. If that wasn't deterrence enough, the spell cards lining the inside should ensure stray hands stayed out of my gear.<p>

After all, a girl's got to have her little secrets.

"You're actually bringing that?" Sanae asked, zipping a black leather jacket over a matching set of pants and a low cut white blouse. Ever since Cirno had shot up from tomboy to a highly _tsundere _ten, the humans of Team Reimu suddenly switched from more utilitarian armor to showier garb. At least the leather offered some protection, unlike the flashy outfits Marisa favored. Unfortunately, Sanae's black leather practically ensured some poor fool would set off my booby-trap.

"You did say non-lethal," I said, slipping a blocky plastic derringer onto my black webbed belt. A blue utility blouse hid both from sight. Unlike Sanae, I preferred my battle dress full of pockets. "Besides, it's so cool!"

"I didn't say non-lethal, I said no collateral damage. You've fought Reimu; you should know that there's a difference," Sanae sighed, tightening a wide belt around her waist. A collapsible baton, a deck of spell cards, and a rolled bundle of _ofuda _paper charms hung on the belt, hugging the wind priestess's hips.

"Relax, it's only a taser," I said, opening the door. "And it's not like its all I have." My own collapsible baton was tucked next to a pen on my sleeve. I wiggled my fingers at Sanae, walking a spell card across my knuckles.

"Patchi tell you anything about this thing?" Sanae asked as we walked out of the locker room. Patchouli Knowledge and her devilish assistant Koakuma served as our unofficial research wing. While not yet a formal part of the Company, Remilia Scarlet had put the full resources of the Scarlet Devil Mansion at our disposal, including one bookworm shut-in.

"Other than it being an American monster?" I asked, shaking my head. "I don't know what its doing out here."

"I did a little research of my own. Gremlins are the monster version of Luddites-" Sanae began. She turned towards me and sighed again. "Nitori?"

I never heard whatever the priestess said after that. I froze in the doorway, my eyes widening. Rack after tack of electronics stood before me, lights flashing in a visual symphony. A bright wide smile lit up my face as I reached for my Gerber multitool on my belt. "So pretty!"

"Hey!" Sanae said, waving a gloved hand in face. "I knew this would happen." She reached over, grabbed the skin on the back of my hand between her thumb and forefinger and twisted.

"Ow!" I pulled my hand away.

"Focus," Sanae said, pointing at the forest of racks and lights. "That gremlin is somewhere in there."

"But-" I whined, my shoulders slumping.

Sanae rolled her eyes as she waved her tasseled whacking stick in front of her. "I'm sure they'll give you the tour afterwards."

I perked back up, "Really? You promise?"

"Let's just get that gremlin."

We slowly walked through the aisles, Sanae and her prayer staff leading the way. My eyes scanned through high and low, left and right, checking each potential hiding place. However, in a communications facility, hiding places abounded. Each of the racks next to us stood 2.5 meters high and one meter square, crammed full of metal drawers and devices of all sizes. In addition, we walked on an elevated floor covered in recliner-sized tiles. Imagine a large supermarket and replace the shelves with equipment racks sandwiched together and the registers by computer terminals. Sprinkle in a liberal shaking of toolboxes and office shelves. Hide one pixie-sized gremlin inside the maze, and that should give you an idea of the scale of our task.

It had taken fifteen minutes to clear one aisle. The work was slow and tedious, and to make things worse-

The sound of a giant switch tripping echoed throughout the hall, and the overhead lights dimmed into thick seamless black. Even the lights on the electronics died. I froze, tapping my various pockets. Next to me, I could feel Sanae jump.

"Nitori!" she stage-whispered. I felt hands tap my shoulder. I held a wrist and felt Sanae's pulse quickening.

"Here," I called out, fishing a pen-sized tube from my pockets. With my free hand, I bent and shook the tube.

A green glow bathed the nearby equipment racks in deep shadows. Sanae appeared, the tension draining from her face. I handed her the cyalume wand. She needed it more than me; my eyes were made for hunting fish in murky waters, although it took longer than usual for my eyes to adjust. I couldn't see color or fine detail well, but the edges of racks and shelves were clear and sharp in their greys.

"Shouldn't the emergency power have kicked in by now?" I asked, watching the darkness ebb and flow as Sanae moved the glow stick around. There was no sign of the emergency lighting.

"Monster first, troubleshoot later," Sanae said, her voice wavering with false bravado. The priestess continued the patrol at a snail's pace compared to our previously languid progress. She tucked her tasseled staff underneath an arm and bent down. Holding the glow stick against a rack, she ran a finger across a label on a drawer. A loud bang like someone staving in metal broke the silence.

Sanae yelped, falling forward and banging her head on the metal drawers. She spun around as she fell backwards, just as another metal drawer shot out where her head was a moment earlier. Her glow stick fell onto the white-tiled sub-floor and rolled away.

I dove towards Sanae, hooking an arm under her shoulder. I dragged her out of the way of another drawer as it explosively burst from its rack. Catching another drawer as it launched out, I rammed it back into the rack slot. A shrill unearthly scream escaped the walls of metal, and I barely ducked a third drawer as it lurched at my eyes.

I staggered backward, my back bouncing off the metal shelves behind me. Sanae grabbed my shoulder, having regained her sense. She shrieked again as something shoved her into me, smothering me in leather-clad priestess.

"Run!" she said, pulling on my arm as the drawer behind me burst forward.

We scrambled our way down the aisle, dodging drawers on both side as though the walls themselves lurched towards us. Think of it as a giant whack-a-mole game, with the equipment racks spitting hammers at Sanae and I, the moles. A chittering laugh like scraping metal sped us along our way.

We stumbled through an intersection. Panting, we stood back to back, peering into the darkness. Each shadow was the monster's long fingers or its silhouette as it stalked across the room as fear played across our imaginations.

I pulled two glow sticks out, bending and shaking the plastic vials. We held them out before us like priests warding off evil in one of Remilia's favorite vampire movies. Spinning slowly in place, we kept our backs together as we searched for the next nasty surprise.

"Nitori," Sanae said, nudging my back with her shoulder. "There it is."

I turned my head towards where Sanae pointed with her glow stick. Perched on top of a nearby rack sat a stocky dark figure with long elfin ears, bulbous eyes, and a mouth full of needle teeth. In its hand, it held a blocky… gun?

It couldn't be! I patted my belt where the taser should be. My eyes widened and my heart sank when I felt it missing.

"Move!" I shouted, diving back into the aisle. Fast repetitive clicking filled the air, and I knew I wasn't fast enough.

How can I describe what shot through my back? Imagine Donkey Kong hyped up on meth and using your back for bongos while he drums the quickest song in history. And I felt each of the seventeen hits per second. I grit my teeth as I hit the ground, electrical impulses dancing between the twin fishhook barbs stuck in my back. Rolling over onto the barbs, I winced. "Ow. Ow. Ow."

The important thing to realize about a taser is that the effects only last with the current. When that ends, so does the pain and inability to move. I stood up, only to see the gremlin glance down at the accursed weapon in his hands. Clawing at my back, I tried to find the fishhooks stuck in my flesh. With a flash of teeth, he pulled the trigger again.

Five seconds may seem short, unless you have to ride the lightning for a second time. My muscles tensed and I collapsed gracelessly once more. Sanae reached towards the wires.

"Don't!" I warbled between clenched teeth. She'd be safe if she grabbed me, but she'd share the shocks if she touched the wires.

As soon as the clacking stopped again, I tore off my utility blouse and the T-shirt underneath. With the skin numbed by the taser, this was the only way I could ensure the barbs were pulled out. Waiting for help would only ensure I'd be tased again. The device carried three charges, and I knew the gremlin would pull the trigger again.

By the tugs on my back, I knew the electrodes had ripped away. I breathed a quick sigh of relief that I didn't have to lose my sport bra as well. Ms. Jones had been adamant about how lonely the workers were. Giving them a free show would only cause me problems.

I spun towards where the gremlin perched, my eyes flashing with anger. The monster danced a merry jig between Sanae's thrown _ofuda _charms. It jerked the trigger, glaring at me when I did not fall. Blue sparks flew out of the device as the gremlin slapped a hand against its side. It dove off the rack, chased by a burning paper charm as it plunged into the darkness.

"Are you okay?" Sanae asked, waving a glow stick over my body. She wiped something coppery and wet off my back.

"I'm going to kill him!" I growled, stepping towards where the gremlin had vanished. My hands clenched into solid fists.

"I'm with you on that, but wait a minute," Sanae said. She fussed with the charms on her belt. I knew she didn't understand my fury; the taser had not zapped her. Holding the glow stick between her lips, she sketched on a charm with a permanent marker. With a loud thwack, she slapped the charm against the nearby rack. The characters inscribed on the paper glowed brilliantly, illuminating the room about as well as a glow stick.

A pulse of raw _power _surged through me, making my skin crawl. It only got worse the closer I came to the charm. If the charm made a simple monster like me squirm, I did not want to know what it felt like to evil ones. I just hoped it hurt. A lot.

"My turn," Sanae growled as the charm sanctified the sphere of space surrounding it. A scream like a soul rent in fire tore through the dark room. "Did you see an exit?"

I looked around the aisles of equipment until I would what appeared to be the remnant of an emergency exit sign hanging from the ceiling by a thin wire. "Over there."

"Open that door and wait outside," Sanae commanded. "I'll herd it out there." She finished altering a second charm and slapped it on top of another rack.

* * *

><p>I hit the door's crash bar running. Sunlight blinded me as I stumbled out onto the sidewalk. A wolf-whistle greeted me. Blinking, my eyes adjusted to the sunlight, only to see someone tall, dark, and staring at me. His clipboard dangled from his hands.<p>

"My eyes are up here," I said, tracing a line from my chest to my eyes. My other arm covered my sports bra from prying eyes. At least he had the good grace to blush and turn away.

"Who are-" he began, trying not to look me up and down out of the corner of his eye.

"I'm working," I said sharply, turning around to face the open door.

"Just trying to be friendly," he said. I could hear footfalls as we walked away.

My skin crawled as I stood outside the building, waiting. I couldn't tell if it was because of Sanae's purification magic, the unwelcome eyes on me, or the salt in the air. Something thumped heavily against metal and shrieked. I almost did too as another pulse of _power _wrenched through my guts.

"Nitori! Head's up!" Sanae shouted from the inside.

Something drab and indistinct, like a shadow of fog, bolted out the door. I dove for it, but my hands slipped off slickened scale. Rolling to my feet, I gave chase after the fleeing gremlin.

For a little creature, the gremlin moved fast enough that my legs struggled to match its pace, much less catch up with the little devil. I knew I should have spent more time on the company's treadmill, but I'd rather swim than run.

The monster zigged and zagged through a grassy field, inerrantly finding every ankle snapping cable and foot grabbing obstacle hidden throughout the field as he made his way towards a large parabolic antenna mounted on a two-story pedestal. It reached the door at the base and stripped the doorknob and locks out from the door with a swipe of his long fingers.

"Catch it!" Sanae said from well behind me. As I ran to the door, something flew by my ear, sticking against the antenna door. The gremlin bellowed as he recoiled away from the paper charm now plastered to the antenna. He dove towards a metal trench nearby, but I grabbed him in mid-jump.

The gremlin's teeth were as sharp as they looked. His jaw clamped down on my forearm. I shrieked, slamming the monster against the side of the antenna pedestal. It let go of my arm, but slipped out of my hand as well. Blood dripped from numerous needle-like punctures in my arm. Not for the first time today, I wished for my well-customized Colt 1911 pistol.

The gremlin took flight once more, bee lining towards the white sand beach that ringed Tsukishima. I held a hand over the bite mark as I ran after him. I'd have Sanae check it out and purify the wound after the chase. Monster bites transmitted many terrible and nasty diseases; just ask any zombie outbreak survivor. If you can find one.

Sand sprayed from its footsteps as the monster ran down the beach. I followed close on its heels, slipping in the loose sand. My ankle rolled, pitching me into the ground-up coral. With all the scrapes and cuts I was collecting today, Reisen would have a field day patching me back up when I got back to Gensokyo.

Egged on by the gremlin's chattering laugher, I took to the air. Magic pushed me into the salt air, the ground below me within an arm's reach.

The gremlin wailed, frantically juking left and right as I closed in on it. It leapt into the air as I buzzed it, slipping past my fingers as I overflew my prey. Banking in a tight circle, I came around for another pass.

Maybe I should have used my Optical Camouflage spell card and cloaked myself in invisibility. Following the gremlin to its nesting place would have then been easy. But the chase was on and in my blood. Besides, the little creep shot me twice with my own taser. The girls at the Company would never let me live that down.

Soaring upwards, I kept my eyes on the fleeing monster running towards the old airstrip. Waiting for the right moment, I turned until the sun was at my back. A blue glow gathered around my hands.

Danmaku kicked up jets of sand as I pounced, dropping from the sky. The monster shrieked, paralyzed by the danmaku crashing into the beach all around him. From the inside, it must have looked like he was trapped by a dust devil. As distracted as he was, I still could find no purchase with my hands as I grabbed at scale and skin. It was as if the little devil was made out of air and spite.

I ran out of sky, slamming into the coarse sand. Large clouds of ejecta showered everything about me as I cartwheeled across the beach. Earth, water, and sky constantly shifted places until the ground finally caught me in its harsh embrace.

I wobbled to my feet, sand pouring off me like rain. My pigtails flung sand about as I shook my head, wincing and writhing. Rough sand had found its way into numerous sensitive areas. Wiping my eyes clean, I could see the gremlin silhouetted against the surf. Without hesitation, I grabbed the first spell card I laid my hand on. A veritable tsunami of danmaku fire swept the devil into the surf. Each step took it into deeper water further from shore. It quickly vanished beneath a rolling swell. The creature would get away, unless…

I took the Gerber multitool from my belt and slid the blade underneath my bootlaces. A quick tug sliced the thick knots away, and a second tug cut the knots on my other boot. I kicked the black leather off my feet and then shucked off the rest of my clothes. Fortunately, some of the more irritating sand fell away.

I ran alongside strange three-toed footprints until the rippling waters wiped them away. Splashing through the warm tide, I searched the ocean for any sign of the gremlin, but the waves easily hid the child-sizes saboteur. The waters finally rolled up to my hips. Breathing deeply, I dove into the clear water; eyes clenched shut and burning. The fire quenched and I saw the sea with the true eyes of a kappa.

It was as if I swam through crystal. I could count the scales of fish as the fled through the coral not more than a hundred meters offshore. I could even make out a grouper hidden in the sands, grown large and fat. Familiar shells shimmered in the sunlight, advertising scrumptious meals. A buffet swam before me, and it made me hungry.

I scanned through the corals and ocean sands until the unnatural lines of a B-29's wings caught my eye. Even as covered in coral and barnacles as it was, the man made engineering called out to me. My grandparents' generation still regaled children with old tales of the silver beasts in the sky scourging the land with flame and steel. A dragon slumbered beneath the waves, and as I remembered one bore something like Okuu's fire, I couldn't help but shudder. That nightmare was a godsend, though. My cat-iris eyes seized upon the dark shape wriggling against the white sand nearby. The gremlin cut through the water, bearing towards the sunken plane.

My lungs burned with carbon dioxide. Cursing the sluggish frailty of my human form, I kicked towards the surface, purging my lungs in a steady stream of bubbles as I ascended. Crystal faded to diffuse fog as my head broke the surface of the water. Kappa eyes were made for water, not air. Cool air filled my lungs and with another powerful kick, I returned to the crystal sea that was my home element.

A human, if lucky, could swim three kilometers an hour in still water, even less in a current. Even with a humanoid form, the gremlin easily made ten kilometers and hour in the water. There was no way I could catch it, no way to ensure the gremlin would no longer plague Pacifisat. No way to collect on the contract Reimu had made.

No _human _way, that is.

I am a kappa; a daughter of a proud and resourceful people who owned the rivers for millennia before men first walked on the earth. We pride ourselves that we survive and flourish even while man asserts his dominion over the earth, and it is our honor that we are known for never breaking our promises, even unto death. I had promised Reimu, Pacifisat, and myself that this gremlin would be no more, and the weight of the triple promise burned upon my soul. No one would be able to say I had failed to uphold the kappas' honor.

Swimming towards the B-29 wreck, chasing a monster that loathed the technology I loved, I made my decision. I Changed. My fingers and toes lengthened, webbing growing between them as they splayed outwards. Human skin turned into greenish hide and my arms and legs shortened. My teeth shrank, turning small and peg-like in a jaw that had become more beak than anything a dentist would recognize. If a human saw me now, I would be lucky if they didn't kill the giant great platypus Thing lurking in the waves. At least it would end the pain.

Try shifting your shape at the very molecular level. You feel every bit of the change grating against raw nerves, and the energy has to come from somewhere. Even with magic, the body still fueled much of the change from its stores. When this was over, it would take a few trips to Mystia's all you can eat seafood buffet before I would need to wear a bra or have anything resembling feminine curves. The change and energy drain overloaded my nerves, but I could only swim forward, compelled by promises and the inability to do anything but ride out the transformation until its end.

With a new form came a new consciousness, inherently kappa but indescribable. Human language just did not have the words.

As I left humanity behind, my speed increased. I sliced through the water like a torpedo. The gremlin loamed larger in my vision, panicking as it struggled against the water, trying to swim faster-

It never occurred to me to consider why kappas stayed to rivers…

The chase ended in the flash of teeth, the snap of a jaw, and a slowly spreading red cloud.

* * *

><p>As I came back to awareness, I found myself collapsed naked on the beach coughing water and blood not my own. My eyes clenched shut, burning as salt flowed between my eyelids. Tears streamed down my face, mixing with the blood and bile on my lips.<p>

I rolled to my side, wincing as I pulled my eyelids open. Before me rested the savaged gremlin corpse, its giant eyes open and unseeing. Chills took me and not just because I was next to the dead. My eyes closed again, and I gulped down air as quickly as I could. Everything felt frighteningly familiar. I should have never transformed in the salt water.

"Nitori!" Sanae shouted. Hands rolled me onto my back and onto something soft as a towel wrapped around me. Another towel propped up my legs, and Sanae sat me up, supporting me by the shoulders. "What happened?"

"I got him," I panted. My throat was so parched that it hurt to swallow.

Sanae's fingers slid up my neck, feeling for the carotid artery. "What's wrong?"

"Water," I croaked, pleading. "River kappa. Salt water. Too much. Dehydration."

Water and sand splashed nearby as heavy footsteps pounded through the surf. Somewhere over me, a male voice said kindly, "Ma'am, what's going on?"

Rough hands checked my pulse and blood pressure at my neck and my wrist. Sanae rattled off my symptoms. After each one, a brusque voice grunted as he confirmed for himself the truth of Sanae's words.

"Hang in there," he said. "We'll have you feeling better soon."

My throat and my tongue, no, make it my entire body burned. "Water," I called once more. My eyes were so heavy….

"Only wet her lips," the kinder man commanded.

"She's going into shock!" the harsher voice called out. I could feel a cold pinch on the underside of my arm.

"Stay with us, Nitori!" Sanae called out.

But I could not. The voices, ever so urgent, faded away-

"Come and rest, weary traveler," a kindly and familiar voice said. I could hear the lapping of water in the background.

I groaned as I opened my eyes, grateful that the fever and burning no longer plagued me. "Where am-"

I froze as my eyes took in my surrounds. A large rock cavern surrounded me, the far edge of a river invisible from where I sat. A rowboat rested on the shore nearby, its oars in their notches. I remembered installing the outboard motor than hung off the stern.

"So, can you spare some yen?" the voice said. I looked up at a tall, voluptuous redhead in traditional robes. Komachi Onozuka held out her hand before me and smiled.

I was on the shore of the Sanzo River, the gateway to the Underworld. My heart fell in my chest. "Am I-?"

The ferrywoman laughed. "Dead? Hardly. Call it a close call, nothing more."

"How close?" I said as she pulled me to my feet.

"Well, you won't be hearing the end of this for a while. Really? A kappa almost drowning?" Komachi laughed as she walked over to her boat. A square board and two bags appeared in her hands.

"It was dehydration," I groaned, remembering the burning on my skin. "Salt water saps the fluids out of us when we're in our true forms." Osmosis tried to equalize the salinity of my body with that of the sea by flushing my body of precious water. That's why kappas never left the rivers and lakes of Japan.

"Sounds like drowning in the ocean to me," the reaper said, setting a shogi board down on the ground between us. Komachi motioned for me to sit. "But a game or two might just buy my silence the next time we go drinking."

I laughed as I helped Komachi set the pieces on the board. "Or until you get drunk. So why should I play a game against a reaper?"

"I really need a break," Komachi said, sighing. She pointed to where a small knot of souls sat a short way down the riverbank. They chanted something about not fearing a reaper.

"Hey, cutie, 'More Cowbell,'" an obnoxious voice brayed.

"Stupid mullet rockers," Komachi muttered under her breath, making the opening move. "Everyone's a wise-ass."

Blazing light filled the cavern, turning the insider brighter than the noon. I shielded my eyes, turning away from the source. Behind us, the singing and catcalling stopped. An aura held all of us still, firmly grasped as though by some massive Hand.

Komachi drew her scythe as she sprang to her feet. The aura held no power on her. "Godsdammit, what is it now!"

"Stay still," a voice like a choir of angels commanded. The compulsion in that voice froze my very soul, but I managed to turn towards the light.

High Lady Suwako Moriya stood in the cavern, revealed in splendor and casting light throughout the darkness. No longer in a child's body, she stood proud and terrible, beautiful and fearsome. Her purple lacquered loricated armor shone, as did her twin rings tied to her belt. A silvery ethereal serpent slithered circles around her.

Komachi rolled her eyes. "Can we get this over with? You're ruining my break."

"On behalf of my anointed one," the Highest of Native Gods began in the same choir-like voice as before. Anointed one? Did she mean Sanae? I never did pay that much attention in divinity classes. An alabaster finger pointed at my eyes. "I have come for the kappa. You cannot have her."

"She's not dead," Komachi insisted, holding her scythe at the ready as she stepped in front of the Highest.

"You aren't lying." In Suwako's polyharmonic divine voice, the statement managed to be question, statement, certainty, and agreement all at the same time.

"She isn't," I squeaked in a quiet voice.

In an instant, the Highest of all Native Gods became her incarnated child-like self once more. The choir faded into a single voice as she spoke. "Oh, well, that's a relief. Sanae will be thrilled."

Komachi sighed, her shoulders slumping. "All I want is one quiet shift," she shrieked. The river behind her roiled and writhed. I cringed as the cold spray hit bare flesh. I could move once more.

"Would you take a peace offering?" Suwako asked, brandishing a bottle and a deck of cards. "You did say you were on a break."

The waters subsided as Komachi snatched the bottle and drank deeply. "Good whiskey. Good enough to be worth the ass chewing I'll get from Eki. Deal the cards, short stuff."

"That's the spirit," Suwako cheered. She sat down, passing out cards out in turn. "Texas Hold 'Em?"

Komachi handed me the bottle and smiled. "Drink up! There's nothing to do until you wake, and it's not like you have to worry about a hangover."

* * *

><p>She lied to me. Okay, that was a little harsh. I was dehydrated and not hung over, as if that slight difference mattered. My body still hurt all over like I had been chugging Marisa and Mima's special rotgut by the liter. (They had learned the recipe from an older witch, or so Marisa claimed. The swill was made from apples. Mostly.) Something jabbed me in the arm. I turned my head and saw surgical tubing jutting out of my arm. An IV bag hung from a nearby stand.<p>

"Where am I?" I asked, cringing at the grating sound of my own voice.

"Tsukishima medical station," Sanae said from my bedside. Of course, the room had that sterile antiseptic design common to hospitals. I could have figured that out myself if my head would quit ringing.

"How bad was it?" I asked, wincing as my stomach rumbled.

Sanae shook her head. "You lost over ten kilograms of body mass, not counting water weight. You scared us to death."

Ten kilos, no wonder I was starving. "I noticed. How long was I out?"

"Long enough for the check to clear," Sanae said, shaking her head. She pointed to the makeshift "Get Well Soon" banner hanging from the ceiling. "And for you to pick up a fan club. Really, you'd think you were Okuu by the way the guys were asking about you."

I looked down at my chest. Sure enough, a big portion of the ten kilos I had lost came from my breasts. "I don't feel like Okuu." I sure as hell didn't look like the busty hell raven, even on my best day.

"All the rumor mill had to say was 'cute,' 'engineer,' and 'naked,' and they were ready to launch a thousand ships in your honor." I looked at Sanae blankly. She sighed. "Does Helen of Troy ring a bell?"

"Who?"

"Read something besides a technical manual for once," Sanae said, shaking her head.

"Like your trashy romances?" I snapped back, my stomach growling again. "I hope someone in my fan club brought chocolates or something." My body needed to replenish its energy. Now!

Sanae eyed the closed door furtively, sliding me a _bento _lunch box. "Well, Nurse Ratchet out there would kill me if she saw this…"

I opened the bento to the small of cucumber and rice. "_Kappa maki_?" Cucumber spring rolls. Yum.

Sanae nodded, smiling. "I told the guys that it was your favorite. Relax, they don't know."

I didn't often crave anything more than cucumbers, but I would have killed for a tuna steak the length of my whole arm or a huge chunk of high-energy shark liver. That didn't stop me from gulping the spring rolls. Sanae handed me another bento filled to the brim with _kappa maki_. That too vanished in seconds, and I fell back into the bed, satiated.

"So, when can I leave?" I asked, basking in the warm glow of a full belly.

"Normally, I'd say until Reimu throws enough money at the doctor, but this spooked her," Sanae said.

I would later find out she had said, "I haven't lost a hunter yet and I sure as hell won't lose a friend. Stay until she's healthy."

"Also, the Company is no longer doing jobs unarmed. Everyone carries at all times from now on, both spell cards and firearms. We'll just have to think out our plans and our gear better from now on."

I so love a challenge. Images like drafted designs flashed though my mind. "That's good. I've got an idea for something I'll call the Dezombiefier-"

Sanae's eyes widened as she recognized the telltale signs of one of my classic technology rants. She fled the room, shivering.

**Author's notes:**

**Thanks to everyone who read this and the earlier story. Special thanks go to Kerreb17 for alpha reading. MHG has become my writing playground, where I can experiment in ways not appropriate to my other upcoming work. More stories in this setting are on their way.**

**Feel free to review and to join myself and many other Touhou writers at the Let's Danmaku discussion forum.**


	3. Dogman

**Monster Hunter Gensokyo: Dogman**

-A Touhou fanfic written by Achariyth.

**Disclaimer**: Touhou Project belongs to ZUN. While this is not a true Touhou/Monster Hunter International cross-over, enough MHI influence exists in the scenario that I will pull this fic if requested by representatives of ZUN, Larry Correia, or Baen Books and I also request that any other fansite that might post this work do the same.

* * *

><p>I leaned against the railing of the Scarlet Devil Mansion's balcony and waited for twilight. Behind me, a small bell rang. I looked back to see Sakuya Izayoi set a small tea set on a platter down on a small table shaded by a pink parasol.<p>

"Is it time yet?" I asked, returning to my chair and the stack of delicious pastries on the table.

Sakuya sighed. "You don't have to do this, Nitori."

"After today, I do," I replied, sipping at the tea. Moral support was so hard to find. It didn't make sense that Sakuya would turn it down.

The door opened, and two fairies in maid uniforms led Alice Margatroid onto the balcony and towards a nearby chair. In addition to holding an ornate Shanghai doll, the puppeteer carried a leather attaché case. Pulling out a thick packet of legal papers, she read carefully, taking the occasional sip from a teacup offered by her Shanghai doll.

"Reimu's serious about this?" Sakuya said. The normally elegant maid cringed as she spoke, her hands twisting the rim of a silver platter.

"We _are _talking about money," the Company's secretary said, scribbling her signature on a page. Alice Margatroid wore many hats in Reimu Hakurei's Monster Hunting company. Whether as a secretary, a shooter, a legal assistant, or an accountant, the puppeteer's unwavering work allowed the rest of the Company to go forth, do good works, and kill evil. Of course, her many puppets allowed her to easily do the work of six people without breaking a sweat.

"She never jokes about that," Sakuya said sighing.

"Welcome back, by the way," Alice said, looking at me. "How are you feeling?"

My last mission had sent Sanae Kochiya and I to Tsukishima island to kill a gremlin infesting a telecommunications facility. We killed it, but I almost drowned, and it took four weeks to recover. Oh, alright, there were other complications as well, but admitting that a kappa almost drowned is embarrassing enough.

"I'm still hungry all the time," I said, munching on a small pastry. "Other than that, as good as new."

"Hungry, eh? So that explains why my chocolate cake is missing?" Alice said.

I sighed. "There's a funny story about that."

Alice turned and asked the maid, "Remilia still won't come out before nightfall?"

"Being a vampire creates certain expectations," Sakuya said.

"Well, well, Nitori, looks like we have time," Alice said, looking straight at me.

"Limitations, don't you mean?" I said. So it was an obvious attempt to change the subject, sue me.

"Not for a master vampire," Sakuya said. A bell rang and the elegant maid vanished inside the mansion.

Idly, I wondered what the bounty for a master vampire like Remilia would be, but I dared not voice the thought. First, I'd be a poor guest to even bring it up; second, the last Hunter who did so got torn apart. Besides, Remilia was the Company's silent partner. I guess but for rare exceptions, the undead cannot stand competition. They're like shrine maidens that way.

"I'd like to hear about what happened today," Alice said, setting her papers underneath Shanghai and looking me in the eye. "And not just about the cake."

"Sanae submitted the report," I protested, gulping down another cup of tea.

"It isn't the same. Besides, we don't have anything else to do while we wait."

I sighed, before starting in the classic opening of soldiers, hunters, and fishermen. "So there I was-"

* * *

><p>I had expected my return from Pacifisat's Tsukishima island some six hours before to be a little more triumphant. Before we boarded the helicopter, Reimu had called to say that she would pick us up. Maybe it was selfish of me to expect signs, balloons and cheers.<p>

"They're late," I said as Sanae and I left the terminal. Sure enough, there was no sign of Reimu or anyone else cheering. Not that I really cared about the curbside attention; I just wanted to see my friends again. I dragged my overstuffed sea duffel over to a bench and flopped down on the hard concrete. "Ow!"

"Careful," Sanae chided, dropping her bag next to mine. Sitting next to me, she sighed. "Maybe they're on a mission?"

"Only Team Youmu. They're chasing some nasty spectre. Or one who only thinks he's nasty. We'll see what happens when he runs into Mima," I said, stretching my arms over my head. "My guess is that Reimu's trying to stop Marisa from looting my workshop again."

Sanae looked around and shivered. "I hope they hurry," she said, motioning with her eyes to where two wiry men in leather jackets leered hungrily. For a moment, I thought I could see golden eyes before sunglasses hid them, although why Reimu had mentioned that in training eluded me.

"Bet you that they'll leave when Reimu gets here," I said. A silver SUV drove up, hiding Sanae's admirers from view. "And speak of the devil." The passenger's door slid open.

"You owe me a game of shogi," Momiji Inubashiri said, dropping onto the ground. She scowled sternly, before smiling and opening her arms wide. "Welcome back!" She crushed me in a hug.

"Careful. I'm still healing," I protested, wincing as I stood to my feet. "It's good to see you again."

"In that case, maybe I'll win a game for once," my friend said as she steadied me. "Come on, let's get you home. All that kappamaki I bought isn't going to eat itself."

"Fat chance," I said, smiling. Momiji played a meaner game of shogi than she let on. The thought of a good friend, a good game, and lots of good food warmed my heart. I reached down for my bag only to have my hand swatted away,

"Don't worry. I'll take it," Reimu said, pulling on the handle. She scowled as she struggled to lift it. "What do you have in here?"

"Just my stuff. A few mementos," I said, shrugging and laughing as I inched away from my boss's stare. "You know, shells from the beach and stuff." Plus about twenty kilos of communications gadgets, manuals, and schematics scammed from Tsukishima employees with nothing more than a smile, a kind word, and the phrase "What Would Marisa Do?" as a guide.

Sakuya Izayoi walked around from the driver's side and helped Reimu wrestle my bag into the rear of the SUV. Instead of her normal maid's uniform, she wore a modest set of slacks and a dressy black blouse. Otherwise, the maid fetishists would swarm her. "Good to see you, Nitori," she said. "Marisa's been nothing but trouble while you've been gone."

"She's nothing but trouble even when I'm here," I said as Momiji helped me into the front passenger's seat, fussing over me until I snapped my seatbelt into place.

Behind me, Sanae and Reimu bantered playfully as they hauled Sanae's bag into the trunk. Sanae turned her head and pursed her lips. Growing serious, she spoke. "Not to rain on anyone's parade, but I'd feel a lot better if we got going."

Reimu stared at her rival priestess. "What's wrong?"

"Call it a feeling," Sanae said, slamming the rear door. She looked around, trying to act nonchalant.

Reimu inhaled deeply and sighed, pursing her lips into a moue of disgust. Maybe she was reading the air of the place. I can't say; I'm not a shrine maiden. "Yeah, I think Sanae's right. Well, I guess even a stopped clock is right twice a day…"

"Just get in," Sakuya said before Sanae could open her mouth. She closed her door and turned the keys. "Really, Flandre and Remilia fight less than you two."

Sanae and Reimu slid in on either side of Momiji, blowing Sakuya twin raspberries before giggling.

"I hope your faces freeze like that," Sakuya sighed as she guided our vehicle out of the loading lane and into traffic.

"Yes, Mom," Reimu said laughing. I hid my laughter behind a hand. While it may be a long way to Gensokyo, at least it'd be a fun ride there.

"Look out!" I screamed, bracing against the seat as a black SUV pulled out in front of us. Its brake lights glowed red as it stopped in our path. Sakuya grit her teeth as she spun the steering wheel with her palm. Our SUV swerved into the left lane, missing the obstacle by centimeters. I breathed deeply, holding my chest. In the back seat, the priestesses released Momiji, whose face was paler than her fur. Sakuya glanced to the rear-view mirror, hissing vile and inelegant profanities. The black SUV's brights flashed on. Tires squealing, it lurched forward, growing larger in my side mirror.

"Can't this go any faster?" Reimu said, looking out the back window.

"I'm working on it," Sakuya hissed as the chasing vehicle slammed into our car bumper, jostling us forward in our seats. She kept the wheel still and fed gas to the engine.

The black SUV slammed into our SUV's bumper again. I shrieked, as the seatbelt caught tight against the chest. I was still too sore from Tsukishima to deal with this.

The engine roared as the maid stomped on the accelerator. "Where is he?" Sakuya said.

"I see him, in our seven and closing," Reimu said from behind the maid, using the clock code as a reference to locate the attacker. She leaned forward and ripped the center console open. Two 1911 pistols sat in the glove compartment.

"Hold on!" Sanae yelled, grabbing the back of my seat. I bounced between the seat and the seatbelt, jostled by yet another collision. The rear of the SUV skidded to the right as our chaser tried to shove us off the road.

Gritting her teeth, Sakuya fed the steering wheel to the right. The skid straightened out, and the two vehicles drove down the center of the lane, locked together as we raced along the road following the fence to the airport.

"Ears!" Reimu shouted as she scooped up one of the pistols and slammed a magazine home. I slipped the ever-present earplugs from around my neck into my ears and clamped my hands tightly against my head.

Reimu twisted around in her seat, bracing herself with her elbows against the seat and the door. The pistol barked as my boss shot through glass. Next to her, Momiji whimpered as her hands rushed to her ears. We fishtailed slightly as the rammer broke away from us, chased by Reimu's bullets.

"Does this happen all the time?" Momiji shouted as she huddled in her seat, her hands pressing her ears against her skull.

"Here!" I said, handing her my spare earplugs. "And no!"

"He's not getting the hint," Reimu said, reloading. Sure enough, our pursuer was closing the distance.

"Hold on!" Sakuya said, spinning the wheel. I gripped the seat rests as the turn through an open metal gate shoved me into the door. We bounced across loose gravel until Sakuya steered onto a taxiway.

"He's still there, coming up quick," Sanae said before adding her pistol fire to Reimu's.

"Keep going!" Reimu commanded.

"Do you think I'm stupid enough to stop?" Sakuya said, her eyes flashing towards the mirrors.

I turned around and watched as the black SUV drove up on our right side and matched our speed. "PIT!" I called out. The PIT was a technique police agencies used to safely stop fleeing cars. The chase vehicle would place the side of its bumper between the target's rear-axle and bumper. One sharp turn later, and the target would spin out to a complete stop in enough time for another police car to make the arrest. Somehow, I knew that whatever was after us would not be as kind as the police.

Sanae emptied her pistol through the glass and into the SUV's windshield. Red splashed onto the passenger's side of the windshield. "Hold the wheel steady!"

"I've done this before," Sakuya said, fishing the Lunar Dial from her pocket and cupping it in her hand. Reimu had sent us all to a defensive driving course, although one unlike what most people think. Most defensive driving courses don't cover shooting AK-74s and M9s through a windshield, improvised armor, or combat ramming.

The chasing SUV kissed the side of our vehicle and turned into us. We spun around, missing the SUV's front bumper by centimeters as it drove past. I reached for the shifter to push it in neutral, but my hand suddenly appeared in my lap and the gearshift settled into neutral on its own. Light faded from Sakuya's hand as she held the wheel steady. Before the SUV settled to a complete stop, she slapped the transmission into drive and floored the pedal, flashing me a glare at the same time.

We hurtled back the way we came. Sakuya swore an unladylike curse as she checked her rearview mirror. "He's turning around."

I looked ahead, past the gate and to the four-way intersection just outside. "I've got an idea." I pulled a thick cylinder that looked like an oversized aerosol can from the glove compartment. A thick purple band ringed the bottom of the smoke grenade. I pulled the ring off and squeezed the spoon in a firm grip.

"How can I help?" Momiji asked, leaning forward.

"I can't throw this far enough yet," I said, reaching back into the passenger compartment. "Take the pistol from Sanae."

Reimu groaned, her pistol wavering as the rammer settled in a blind spot. "She throws like a girl."

"At least I look like one," Sanae snapped as she took the smoke grenade from my hands.

My eyes snapped wide. "Grab the spoon," I hissed, trying to shove the grenade's safety lever underneath the priestess's fingers.

"Cut that out!" Sanae squealed, slapping at my hand.

I ripped the cylinder from her hands and tossed it underhanded into the cargo compartment. Hissing emanated from the way back, and thick clouds of violet smoke billowed into the cabin.

"Stop the car!" Reimu coughed. The SUV skidded to a stop in a squeal of brakes. Closing my eyes, I shoved my door open and rolled out, dropping behind the wheel as I hacked through the acrid smoke. Sanae and Momiji crouched next to the other wheel on my side. Thanks to one smoke grenade, we were now in the last place one ever wanted to be in a car chase; huddled behind the axles of a stopped SUV.

The black SUV skidded to a halt behind us. Reimu and Sanae trained their pistols at the pursuer's doors. I dropped low to keep the smoke out of my eyes and palmed a spell card. "Where are they?" I said, shading my eyes.

A chill ran down my spine as a low growl escaped Momiji's throat. Half a dozen men in leather walked around from the sheltered side of the black vehicle. Although wiry, they moved with an easy grace and an absolute disregard for safety. If I were them, I would have shot at us from behind the cover of their vehicle.

The lead one sniffed the air and dropped his sunglasses. He unzipped his jacket. In an instant, the wiry man was no more, replaced by some steroid-fueled bestial mix of man and wolf. The werewolf howled, filling the field with its call. I caught a glimpse of golden eyes and hissed, grateful that we always loaded with silver-tipped ammunition. All evil hated silver; werewolves hated it more than most.

My heart fell as the others burst into their lupine forms, all fangs and claws and muscle. A flash out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. Sakuya's Lunar Dial glowed. In an instant, the belly of a brown ball of muscle and fur exploded in a thick rain of blood and offal. For a moment, as the monster fell backwards, I thought I could see a flash of black reach up into the werewolf's ribcage.

Sakuya appeared suddenly, crouching next to me. One hand held the fading Lunar Dial. Blood fell like water from the piece of raw meat pulsing in her other clenched fist. I recoiled from the maid; covered in blood and blood-stink, she looked more like a vampire than her master.

"One… down…" she panted, as the werewolf twitched and then went still. Dropping the now dead heart, she wiped blood-drenched hair from her eyes. I rocked away from the scarlet mist, cringing as the spray soaked my skin. It seemed like I could never avoid being covered in the stuff.

"Only one?" Sanae quipped.

"I just had my hand up a werewolf's ribcage; do you think I want to do that again?" Sakuya said, shaking gore from her hands. Mercifully, it flew away from me, dotting the pavement.

"Was that the alpha?" Reimu asked from the other side of the SUV. If we had killed the pack's leader, it might take the fight out of the survivors.

"No," Momiji growled, baring her teeth. The wolf tengu's fur stood on end. If anyone could determine lupine hierarchies in an instant, Momiji could.

In that instant, the remaining werewolves charged. A knife caught another werewolf in the throat. The creature fell over, clutching its ruined neck. It pulled the knife out and wobbled to its feet, the bloody hole sealing while we watched. Momiji and I scored numerous hits with danmaku, stinging but not stopping the cascading wall of fur and claws bearing down on us. Reimu and Sanae jerked the triggers in their hands, sending lead and silver flying towards the running wolves until their pistols' slides locked back. Dirt and concrete sprayed from the misses. Blood and bone blew out the back of a werewolf's head; one of the gunners had gotten lucky.

When silver runs out, there are essentially three ways to kill a werewolf; cut the head off, cut the heart out like Sakuya did, or inflict more damage than the creature could heal. All of them meant matching fist and danmaku against claw and muscle; a losing proposition for anyone not an oni or not named Meiling.

A heavy jolt shook the smoking van. My head jerked around and I scrambled out of the way as Reimu slid across the SUV's hood feet first. A claw tore at her giant bow as she dropped next to me, rolling to her feet.

"Anyone-" she began, interrupted by an inhuman scream.

White fire engulfed the nearest werewolf as though it were soaked in pitch. The creature fell to the ground, clawing at the fire and a large paper charm stuck to its chest as it rolled and writhed. Sanae threw more charms at the beast, stoking the fire eating away at the wolf. The monster succumbed to the flames, unable to heal.

How could I have forgotten the golden rule of monster hunting? When all else fails, kill it with fire. With Sanae and Reimu's blessed charms, we might just pull through this without anyone visiting the hospital or a friend's grave.

Charms flew out, forcing wolves to dodge the lethal sanctifying magic. I did my best to confuse the wolves with danmaku, hoping that one would leap out of the way of one of my shots and into the path of a charm, but the creatures just soaked up my magical shots.

Momiji yelped as a claw sunk into her leg. With a jerk, the white wolf tengu fell underneath the SUV; Momiji's hands scratched at the ground. Her eyes grew wide with fright. Sakuya and I dove for my friend, but something pulled her beneath the vehicle first. Teeth snapped shut and something whimpered as the vehicle rocked uncontrollably.

"Tengu!" a voice wheezed in between wet coughs. The two werewolves quit dodging charms. With mighty leaps, they threw themselves over the van and into the smoke.

The van rocked with a bone-jarring crash. I rolled away from the axle, flinging danmaku under the SUV at the growls and snapping teeth. Quickly, the four of us rounded the ends of the vehicle, eager to even Momiji's odds.

An arm like fuzzy rebar clotheslined me. As I fell backwards, gagging and stunned, claws raked at me, ripping my clothes. I screamed, fully expecting to be bathed in my own warm, sticky blood. Instead of laying me open to the bone, the werewolf caught me by my belt and spun me into an embrace. Coarse fur dug into my skin, and the wolf squeezed four claws into the soft part of my neck. I could feel small drops of blood pool where the tip of each claw barely broke the skin. I froze, shivering.

"Do not interfere with our challenge," the creature growled through a mouth ill suited for speech. He pulled me closer, the palm of his hand crushing against my throat. I gasped, trying to suck down air, the monster's fetid breath hot against my cheek. Behind me, I could hear what sounded like dogs snarling and baying.

Sakuya hissed, her hands filled with stubby throwing knives. I though back to the wolf she slew and shivered; I had no desire to stand in a fountain of blood. The maid eyed my captor as she waited, hopefully for the best time to rescue me without turning me into kappa fillets in the process.

"Let her go!" Reimu said. The werewolf spun me until I could see the priestesses at the ready, drums and spell cards blossoming in their hands. Reimu's Yin Yang orbs hovered next to her, humming. Another werewolf, this one reddish in color, bared its teeth as it stood between the priestesses and Momiji.

"Not a step closer or we feed on the meat," Red said. I screamed as a sticky sandpapery tongue ran up my neck to my cheek. I hung in the wolf's arms like a limp Shanghai doll as he set his back against our dented SUV.

For the first time, I could see Momiji as she fought. My friend had transformed into something between a wolf and a woman. Scarlet tendrils flew from her snowy fur as her claws tore into her silvery foe. She hissed and growled as her open jaws sought a way around her enemy's as each sough the other's throat. Cringing, I watched as the werewolf's claws tore deep into Momiji's arm. Blood flowed freely from the wound.

An old song about a snow dog ran through my mind as I watched. Hey, stress does funny things to the mind…

Momiji shattered the werewolf's knee with a devastating kick. Silver dropped onto his back with all the grace of a falling sack of rice. The tengu fell upon him, her claws ripping furrows into skin and muscle. The werewolf staggered Momiji with a vicious backhand, kicking her away with his good leg.

Bellowing as bone fragments ground back together into one solid mass, Silver stood up and charged. The thick gashes in his chest shrank to nothing more than scratches by the time he sunk his teeth into Momiji's shoulder. The tengu's claws flensed away the werewolf's back as he shook his head wildly. Silver let go, blood running down his jowls as he bit for Momiji's throat.

The tengu grabbed his jaws and wrenched the lower one out of place. I lost track of what happened soon after as the two mortal enemies tore into each other in a whirlwind of fang and claw.

My captor panted in my ear as he watched, the sticky sweet scent driving him quivering to the edge of frenzy. I groaned with each tensing of his muscles as he watched the fatal challenge, his arms crushing against me. Try as I might, I could not reach the spell cards that might have earned my freedom; I was pinned.

Momiji staggered backwards, her white fur stained almost completely red. Silver barreled into her, and she fell on top of him. Spinning around, she climbed on her enemy's back and clubbed him to the ground. Grabbing the werewolf's neck, she wrenched his head sharply to one side. Silver fell limp, his arms and legs spasming as nerves fired wildly before dying. Hooking two claws under the jaw, Momiji tore out the werewolf's throat. As blood tumbled out of the wolf's neck like water over rapids, I closed my eyes. Even as grievous the wounds Momiji had inflicted were, the creature could still heal, in enough time.

Bones snapped and flesh ripped. My blood ran cold as a triumphant howl echoed through the land:

_My pack is the greatest!_

Momiji stood in a puddle of blood flowing from the now headless werewolf, his head rolling away from her feet. My captor growled, and his claws began to bite through my skin.

Before I could scream, the world exploded in a spray of glass. I found myself stumbling freely towards Momiji, several meters away from the SUV. Tripping to the ground, I triggered my Optical Camouflage and vanished from sight, huddling the ground while I searched for my captor.

The werewolf howled in pain, his arms flopping useless by his side. Knives stuck out from his fur, cutting through key tendons between his shoulders and his arms. He pitched forward as Sakuya teleported, crashing through the SUV's window before perching on his shoulders like a blood-soaked angel. A long knife stabbed towards the monster's brain stem, but bit deep into the shoulder instead.

Red slammed into the SUV next to Sakuya, crushing the passenger door as a Yin Yang orb slammed into his belly. The maid vanished, reappearing inside a rapidly spinning circle of orbs protecting Sanae and Reimu. With a flick of Sanae's wrists, paper charms flew in clouds as thick as danmaku. The two werewolves fled into the treeline, sped along by the priestesses' magic. When they vanished, I dropped my camouflage.

"Nitori!" Sanae shouted as she ran to me. Nearby, Momiji shrank back into her usual form and pulled me to my feet. The priestess pulled my head to one side, baring my neck.

"I don't smell infection," Momiji asked, wrinkling her nose. Werewolves passed their curse mostly through bites, but sometimes only a scratch was needed. The last thing I wanted was to turn into one of those beasts.

Sanae placed a hand on the oozing scratches dotting my neck. She closed her eyes, and I could feel her hand grow warm. "I agree. She's clean. And as for you-" the priestess turned to my friend, placing a hand on the oozing bite marks. "I can't tell where the tengu ends and the werewolf could begin."

"I'm fine," Momiji said as she looked down at the injury. "Tengu are immune."

A green glow faded into Momiji's shoulder as power left Sanae. "Just in case."

Reimu opened up the rear door. What was once massive billows of smoke now came out in wisps. "Shouldn't be too long before we can leave." She looked inside and whistled. "I hope your bags were fireproof."

I made a moue of disgust at that; some of the toys from Tsukishima would be expense to replace; both in terms of money and dignity.

Sakuya reached inside the black van and popped the hood. Using her knives, she shredded any hose she could find until the van sat in a lake of various fluids and oils.

"Anything interesting in there?" Sanae called out as she seized my arm. Momiji took my other one, and they all but carried me back as we hurried to our battered ride.

"Hurry up," Reimu called out, opening the side doors. "I want to be out of here before those two find their courage again."

Sakuya disappeared inside the ruined SUV. The vehicle rocked as she threw out booklets and a small pack. As she left, she lobbed a cell phone to Reimu. The shrine maiden caught it, slipping the device into a pocket.

After loading the various papers into the van, we piled in, but not before I ran a Water Curtain over the bloodied Sakuya and Momiji. The maid hopped into the driver's seat, turning the key, Sanae fished through the center console, frowning as she pulled out the last full magazine. She popped out five rounds and handed them to Reimu, who loaded her pistol's magazine. One speed load later, and both our pistoleros held their weapons at the ready, trigger fingers against on the side of the barrel.

Sakuya peeled out as we passed through the gate. With a sigh as we hit the open road, I relaxed, slumping into the seat and shaking. Behind me, the priestesses stowed their weapons in the center console.

"What the hell was that?" Reimu demanded, turning towards Momiji. "Since when do werewolves fight in single combat?"

"There's a lot about monsters you don't know," Momiji said, holding her hand over the bite marks in her shoulder.

"Try me. My company is full of monsters," Reimu said, nodding her head towards me.

"I am a wolf. So were they, even though it pains me to admit it. Only one pack could remain," Momiji said, wincing as she worked her shoulder. "The enmity between our two kinds… it's like…"

"Like between tanuki and kitsune?" Sanae asked. Before we left for the island, Team Reimu had responded to a distraught phone call from Chen. Mamizou Futatsuiwa, one of the newer residents of Gensokyo, had almost turned Ran Yakumo into a rather elegant and fluffy fur coat.

"Worse," Momiji said. "Let me rest a bit. The transformation took a lot out of me."

I knew that all too well; a month earlier, my own transformation into my true kappa form burnt away ten kilos of body mass.

My friend slumped over in her seat. "Is she okay?" I asked, reaching for her. She snored loudly before falling onto Sanae's shoulder.

The wind priestess groaned. "She's heavy."

Reimu opened her mouth, probably to utter something as cutting as Sakuya's knives, but the chorus of "Hungry Like the Wolf" interrupted her. She fished around in her pockets before pulling out a blinking cell phone.

"Hello?" Reimu said into the phone. She held the phone in her hand and set it on speakerphone. "Who's this?"

"I see my servants have failed," the voice, cold and animalistic, growled. "You will pay for that. One life for each you've slain, and I happen to have your down payment right here."

"Where are you?" I asked. Deep foreboding welled in the pit of my stomach.

"Your office isn't the fortress you thought it was," the voice said. His laugh grated against my soul. "And what do we have here? Ah, such a pretty blonde girl, waiting for her friend."

"Alice," I mouthed. My blood ran cold. Looking at the pale complexions of my teammates, I was not the only one. Our secretary often worked long hours alone. Still, calling Alice a secretary was like calling Shou a kitten.

"For the memory of my servants, let's play a wonderful game," he taunted, breathing heavily into the phone.

"You touch Alice-," Reimu warned.

"Alice? Not the game I had in mind," he howled.

"I will hunt you. I will find you and I will kill you," Reimu shouted into the phone.

"You may try, but I'm afraid the woodsman will come too late for Little Red Riding Hood," the wolfman said, laughing. "My, what big teeth I have."

"Want to see mine?" a childish voice said, like the sound of crystals clinking together. "Ahhh…"

"What the-" the wolf shouted. Whatever he said next was lost in a cacophony of crashing furniture, primal screams, and the high, pure laughter of a child at play. Someone choked through a series of gurgling wet coughs until even that ended in a death rattle. The signal died soon after.

We endured the drive to the office in silence.

* * *

><p>I stared at Sakuya as I stood on the opposite side of our office doorway. The sole company building outside the Hakurei barrier, this office served as nothing more than a way for those who lived outside Gensokyo to contact us. Behind her, huddled against the concrete wall, Reimu and Sanae stood clumped against the maid, their pistols pointed at the ground. We had stopped only long enough to arm Sakuya and myself and grab enough ammunition to kill a rampaging zombie horde or one ill tempered wight.<p>

Sakuya slapped Reimu's thigh, waiting for the signal that Reimu and Sanae were ready. The maid nodded, and I reached up and opened the door with my free hand. Light flashed, Sakuya vanished, and the door crashed inwards, bouncing against the inside wall. First Reimu and then Sanae rushed inside. I followed Sanae, my pistol up and ready. A wall of blood stench hit me moments before the nausea.

The room had been painted in blood. Walls, ceilings, desks, chairs, you name it, it was all covered in a thickening spray of the drying coppery liquid. I couldn't see any flies hovering inside, but I knew it was only a matter of time. Wriggle's little friends just loved the sickeningly sweet smell. Sakuya blanched and Sanae gagged. Remarkably, Reimu seemed unfazed.

"What happened?" I asked, swinging my pistol through my assigned field of fire, searching for anything not covered in blood. "Rampaging blood beast?"

"No," Sakuya said, pulling her pistol's grip back into her chest. A flash of white and yellow bounced up behind a desk. It moved far faster than I could track with my pistol.

"Sakuya!" a pleasant, childish voice called out as the blur careened into the maid, sending her pistol bobbling in her hands. Sakuya grunted as Flandre Scarlet gave her a huge bone-crushing bear hug.

"Flandre? What're you doing here?" Reimu said, not quite training her weapon on the child vampire. "Did you see Alice?"

"No," Flandre said, releasing Sakuya and dropping to the ground. ""There's no one here but me." I relaxed slightly, but still kept my pistol at the ready.

"Little Mistress, was there anyone here earlier?" Sakuya asked. She had holstered her pistol and was now rubbing her throat.

Flandre shrugged. "Just some bad doggies. I had to scold them, but they went away." The young girl actually seemed confused. She held out her hand and it filled with a sphere of something that turned my stomach to even look upon it. "All I did was go 'kyu..." The sphere vanished with a loud crack and a puff of acrid smoke.

I dove to the floor, grinding cold bloody ooze into my clothing. Looking around, I saw Sanae huddle underneath a now maroon desk. Reimu still stood, but her face paled unnaturally, as if she had looked once again into the face of death. Only Sakuya seemed unaffected. Laughing nervously, I stood back up.

"Good girl, Flandre," I said, trying to keep the shaking out of my voice.

"Don't encourage her," Sakuya hissed in a low tone as she glared at me.

"Let her have her moment," I said. "She did make the bad monsters go away."

"Just like you, Sakuya," Flandre said, beaming.

Sakuya sighed. "Good work, Flandre. When we get home, I'll make you a special treat."

"I already had one," Flandre said, spinning around and laughing. Sure enough, a slight bit of chocolate frosting was smeared on her cheek. "Can I have another if I make more bad monsters go away?"

I glanced over at Reimu nervously. My jaw dropped; that crazy shrine maiden actually looked like she was thinking it over. For the first time, I reconsidered working as a Monster Hunter. Following a boss trying to corner the market on crazy was sheer foolishness.

"Little Mistress, you can help me out when you grow up," Sakuya said, kneeling down in front of the eternal child, a strained but friendly smiled upon her face.

"Okay!" Flandre said, nodding timidly.

"Let's go home," Sakuya said, producing a parasol with a flourish. The little vampire smiled toothily and clapped.

Sanae stepped away from her hiding spot, trying to scrub her hands clean against her ruined skirt. "Ugh, how are we going to clean up this mess?"

I looked at the scene from a horror movie gone wrong and sighed. "Not easily. Maybe with bleach. Liters and liters of bleach."

Reimu sighed. "Honestly, I think we might be better off just tearing the building down." As frugal as she was, the suggestion shocked me.

"I can help with that!" Flandre's voice rang out.

"NO!" Reimu, Sanae, and I shouted. I turned to the door where Sakuya, carrying Flandre and the parasol, reached for her Lunar Dial. In an instant, the maid and the vampire vanished.

* * *

><p>Alice interrupted me, her Shanghai doll scribbling madly while she spoke. "So, any clue as to who sent the werewolves?"<p>

"I'm working on cracking that cell phone, but it's still too early," I said, shrugging as I reached for yet another pastry. "And why do you think that someone's behind this?"

"Do you think that I can't tell another puppet master's handiwork?" Alice said, shaking her head at me.

"It could have been a rogue pack," I said, playing Devil's Advocate.

Alice laughed humorlessly. "Nine wolves? That's a large pack. Most packs stay small; it's easier to hide from Hunters that way."

"They were going up against Hunters."

"When was the last time we fought werewolves?" she said. I stared at her, dumbfounded. We had fought satyrs, gremlins, ghosts, undead of all stripes and sizes, and even a hidebehind, but never a werewolf before today. "Yet they targeted us specifically, and with good intelligence too."

"Maybe they just hate Hunters?" I said, wishing I brought a notebook with me. It helped to think with ink and paper.

"That doesn't feel right," Alice said, staring at the horizon. "Someone had to have scouted when Reimu left to pick you up. And I don't see a werewolf making it past the tengu pickets into Gensokyo. The scout had to be another species of monster, which means there's some form of organization against us. Too bad you couldn't have taken a prisoner."

It was my turn to laugh. "We're not in the business of taking prisoners. Even so, the only living ones ran away. And as for Flandre's…" I mimed an explosion. "Kyu."

"Please don't do that," Sakuya said, appearing out of thin air. "It makes people jumpy; as I'm sure you can understand."

"Can you speed up the work on the phone?" Alice said. "I'm doing everything I can just trying to keep Reimu and Marisa from attacking every single monster they see."

I shook my head. As an engineer, I did very little of the work directly, relying instead on computer programs to do the heavy lifting. "I should get the read outs some time in the morning."

"Well, if you're busy…" Sakuya drawled, pointing to the mansion's front gate.

"And leave this paperwork to you?" Alice laughed. "Hardly. Besides, I sent them into town with Cirno and Wriggle."

Sakuya winced. Chaperoning the youngest Hunters on a night on the town was like riding herd on cats. Of course, instead of reining in her charges, Marisa would be leading the charge into trouble.

"You can't be surprised they're acting like this, though. We just got attacked," I pointed out. "We thought we were going to find you with your throat torn out."

"Oh ye of little faith," Alice said smiling. Shanghai pulled out two wicked cleavers, spun them once, and sheathed them. Unlike Sakuya's knives, Alice had paid to inlay thin lines of silver along the edges of her dolls' weapons. "We just need to be smart. All Reimu and Marisa are doing now is scaring our leads into hiding. We'll never find the puppet master that way."

Sakuya shrugged. "It's worked for us before."

Alice stared at the maid incredulously. "That wasn't a lone wolf you faced. Someone gathered and aimed an entire pack at you. That takes planning and intimidation. Anyone who can do that will have a second, third, and at least a fourth string to their bow. At least that's what I would do in their place. There's going to be another attack."

"More werewolves?" Sakuya said.

"Probably not," Alice said after a moment.

"More money, at least," I pointed out. Hey, the really cool gadgets are _expensive_.

Sakuya grimaced. "Don't remind me."

"Speaking of which, there's a little matter of two million yen," Alice said, consulting her paperwork. "That's an awful lot of PUFF for a little girl." The Americans had established the Perpetual Unearthly Forces Fund as a bounty system for the eradication of dangerous monsters. Given the success of that program, other nations quickly established their own versions under different names. However, all Hunters called the various bounties by the name of the most famous bounty system of all. With one "kyu," Flandre Scarlet, of all people, had earned her place as the sole recipient for the bounties on three werewolves.

"It's not the money," Sakuya said. I agreed, although the two million or so yen we earned for our share of the dead werewolves was nothing to sneer at either, and Momiji's million for killing the alpha would set her up for life, even a tengu's long one. "It's-"

The door slammed open, rebounding against the wall. A petite girl in a pink dress stormed out onto the balcony, a parasol in her hand. Stopping in front of her maid, the girl planted her free hand on her hip, baring two slender, sharp fangs. Sakuya squirmed under her mistress's intense stare.

"Why does Flandre want to be a Monster Hunter when she 'grows up'?" Remilia Scarlet demanded.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

Thanks to Kerreb17 for proofreading. All mistakes are my own.


	4. Portent I: Harbinger

**Monastery of the Blessed Eightfold Path, Yamagata Prefecture**

_It was silly how a simple smile could do what a rampaging Akkadian sand demon could not; freeze MI-13 operative Ian Anderson in his tracks._

_The smile's owner, a petite shrine maiden in her early twenties, beamed a more than welcoming smile at the tall, dark stranger. A rare Shintoist at the Buddhist monastery, her eyes promised a warmer hospitality than the monastery normally offered._

_Alas, the British Monster Hunter could not spend time for clumsy courtship. The British government's monster elimination organization, MI-13, had sent him on a whirlwind tour investigating various UNESCO sites for the telltale signs of impending monster attack. Rifleman Anderson had earned his MI-13 position with his steadfast courage when 4th Battalion, the Rifles squared off against an Akkadian sand demon on the outskirts of Basra, Iraq. While the same courage had served him well in his career against black omen dogs, werewolves, and a zombie outbreak, it vanished in the pure light of a woman's smile._

_"Death is lighter than a feather," Anderson said in rotely memorized Japanese. He flashed a rueful smile at the shrine maiden, hoping the blush in his cheeks did not burn too brightly._

"_This way, Hunter," an old voice said in heavily accented English. Anderson turned reluctantly away from the shrine maiden and followed his guide down a swept dirt road. A wizened old man accustomed to hard labor, the guide had worked for the temple for decades._

"_Yes, of course," Anderson said, casting one last lingering look at the vision of loveliness. "Where are we going?"_

"_You wanted to see where the sokushinbutsu make their change." The old man ambled down the path, heading slowly towards a raised hill. "The cells are this way."_

_Ian nodded and followed. Sokushinbutsu, or Buddhist self-embalming monks, sat alone in restrictive cells until they died. The cell was then sealed airtight for a thousand days. If all went well, and the man's faith proved strong enough, a perfect preserved body would be found when the cell opened. Otherwise, the body rotted in the cell. However, the same process that created mummies could also create powerful wights or ghouls, creatures that were far above a zombie as a man was above a fly. MI-13 and UNESCO had sent Anderson to ensure that the dead stayed that way without damaging the precious cultural artifacts._

_The guide stopped in front of a sealed stone doorway. With strength beyond his shriveled form, he slid the rough-hewn stone out of the way. "I will remain here."_

_Anderson shrugged as he fished out a small headlamp from his coat. Adjusting it as he turned on the light, the British Hunter stepped into the tomb. Sealed cells lined the narrow stone halls as far as the light could reach. "Are there any monks here now? Live ones, I mean."_

"_Only those who decayed remain," the guide said. "New sokushinbutsu have been illegal for decades."_

_A shiver ran down Anderson's spine. If UNESCO's fears proved true, each cell could be filled with a zombie or worse. He slid his SIG P226 service pistol out of his shoulder holster. The familiar weight of the weapon reassured him._

_The old man shouted in surprise. Ian turned around in enough time to catch his guide as he fell into the tombs. Stone grated against stone as the door closed. All went dark, except for a small patch illumined by the LED on Anderson's forehead._

"_Stay behind me," he ordered, walking slowly towards the blocked doorway. He shoved against the door with his shoulder. "Is there any-" Ian asked, turning towards the old man. Glowing red eyes blinked at the edge of the light's reach. Ian backed against the wall as a shadow picked up the old man, and with a swipe of a hand, ripped his throat out. Blood sprayed throughout the hall._

_Ian fired wildly at the red eyes, but the shadows closed rapidly. A boney hand raked his coat. Anderson collapsed, paralyzed by the wight's chill touch. He had but a moment to pray for the shrine maiden's safety before blackened nails tore into him._

* * *

><p><strong>Monster Hunter Gensokyo: Portent<strong>

**Chapter 1: Harbinger**

A Touhou fanfic inspired by Larry Correia's _Monster Hunter International _series

-Written by Achariyth.

**Disclaimer**: Touhou Project belongs to ZUN. While I haven't made this a true Touhou/MHI cross-over, enough MHI influence exists in the scenario that I will pull this fic if requested by representatives of ZUN, Larry Correia, or Baen Books and I also request that any other fansite that might post this work do the same.

* * *

><p><strong>Tanden Village, Nagano Prefecture<strong>

She crept through the fields, pulling herself along with all too-human hands. For a week, she had hidden near the village, listening to the cries of a newborn human youngling. The soothing songs that youngling's mother sang all week inflamed her blood.

Many years ago, when she had been more comely and less scaled, she too had borne children. But war came, and invaders sealed her family in a cave. For weeks, her family starved. Ever the dutiful mother, she gave her children what little food she could scrounge. However, hunger proved stronger than love. Her rescuers found her cracking tiny bones for marrow. Fleeing before the horrified soldiers could kill her, she fell under the wrath of the Olympian gods.

No longer could she see with her own eyes. Smooth skin covered empty sockets ensuring sight itself would not distract her from the images of her children haunting her mind's eye. She had tried taking her own life, but the gods prevented that. Her body would heal from any wound, but she would never be sated. Eternal torment, eternal hunger, and eternal life, three gifts from the gods to replace her murdered children. She wandered the world, consumed by her gifts. But when she heard a youngling's cry, hunger once again was the master of sorrow and pain.

She slipped through the morning dew, weaving between crops as she slivered closer towards four homes clustered around a well. Even without eyes, she could still see the sleepy village. Not even dogs ran along the swept dirt paths.

Light glimmered from a rooftop. She froze, staring at the roofs. Black and gold flashed from the top of one of the houses. Minutes crept past. Her muscles tensed as she waited, but nothing else danced on the rooftops. She pulled herself forward again, rolling across the narrow paths between fields.

The youngling cried out. Her mouth watered and she crept faster. Only one more field lay between her and her prey. She dropped into a drainage ditch bordering the field and a path and followed it towards the houses. To her surprise, the village remained quiet. The dogs should have yapped at each other, but the fields seemed to hold their breath, like a forest when the wolf walks through.

The child cried again. This time, she also heard a mother making soothing sounds toward the youngling. At least someone was up and about, so she was not walking into a trap. She climbed up the side of the ditch. Running towards the house, she kept low to the earth until she pressed her body against the wooden wall. Looking into a window, she watched a young mother in a long blue dress, little older than a girl herself, leaned over a crib and sang. Smiling, the girl turned and sat in a tall wooden chair.

She waited, holding her breath as she watched the mother read from a thick black book. The girl's head bobbed once and then sleep took her.

Sliding a claw between the window and the wall, she eased the window open. The mother remained asleep.

She threw an arm and a leg over the windowsill, easing herself through the window and onto the floor. Padding across the room, she stepped in front of the crib. Looking back at the mother, she ripped the blankets from the youngling with her claws. Scooping up the infant, she froze. The youngling felt cold to her touch.

Behind her, where her eyeless sight could not see, the mother's eyes opened.

She held up the baby in front of her eyeless face. A toy in a blue dress, nothing more. That toy blew up in her hand. She howled, clutching her shredded limb. Her curse began knitting together mangled strips of flesh into something more usable. That made her hungry, and she could still smell the mother through the sulfurous smoke. The lamia leaped at the chair.

* * *

><p>Alice Margatroid threw herself out of her chair, rolling as she hit the floor. "Wriggle!" she said, shouting over shattering wood. Three dolls jerked to life, flying circles around the puppeteer.<p>

The door burst open, cracking against the wall. Wriggle Nightbug ran inside, her FNP 40 pistol spitting silver and lead at the lamia. The eyeless monster bellowed and rushed the doll master, swatting the dolls out of her way. Wriggle lowered her pistol; the monster was close enough that the insect queen would hit Alice.

Alice found herself in the worst place a Hunter could be; within a monster's reach. Spinning away, the doll master shoved the monster away with her foot. Staggering, the lamia fell into a corner. "Shoot!" Alice yelled as she ran crouching towards the door.

Wriggle jerked the trigger. Silver-tipped lead tore into monster flesh and wooden walls. Her last shot flew out the window as Alice dragged her out into the hallway. The firefly grabbed the splintered door, pulling it shut behind her.

Light flashed as a spell card burned at Wriggle's feet. A line of dolls appeared, each one holding a silver-edged spear towards the closed door. Dropping into a crouch, the firefly trained her pistol at the doorway. With her free hand, she unbuttoned a pant's-leg pocket. A cloud of mites billowed like smoke high into the hall.

The doorjamb shattered outward as the scaled lamia crashed into the hallway. Wriggle fired again and fumbled with a reload, cringing as danmaku flew centimeters above her head.

Standing behind a corner, Alice tossed danmaku while the line of dolls marched down the hall. The lamia recoiled, hissing as it backed into the room. Seconds later, the wrecked chair flew into the hall, bowling over the dolls.

The eyeless monster lunged for Wriggle. The firefly leapt to her feet, firing wildly as she ran towards Alice. The lamia collapsed to the ground with a silver spear jutted out from her hamstring. Clutching stakes, two dolls ran onto the lamia's back.

Alice caught the firefly youkai with her arms, taking care to keep the pistol pointed towards the fallen monster. "Shoot her," she shouted.

The lamia reached behind her and hurled both dolls into the walls. She stood up, baring serpentine teeth at her attackers. Pelted with burning silver and searing magic, the monster howled, dashing back into the baby's room on her hands and good knee like a three-legged animal.

Wriggle's mites flew after the creature, harrying it with bites. The firefly's antennae quivered as she listened to a faint hum. "It's going for the window!"

"Follow it," Alice shouted, ripping spell cards out of a belt pouch. The puppet master ran into the room in time to see the scaled woman jump out of the window. "She's escaping!" she said, pressing a hand against the mike hidden in the choker around her neck. Unwilling to vault over the windowsill in a long skirt, she hurled clusters of danmaku after the lamia.

"Relax, I've got this."

Black streaked through the air. Clinging to her broom, Marisa flew past the monster, banking hard as she slipped to a stop. The lamia hissed and screamed as danmaku curtained off her escape. The eyeless monster spun around, running the way she came. Already, she had switched from a three-legged lurch to a healthy four-legged sprint.

Alice fell through the window as something heavy crashed into her. Landing in an undignified heap, the doll maker could only watch Wriggle fly past.

"Sorry!" the firefly shouted as she rushed towards the lamia. Cards flashed in the girl's hand and a wall of danmaku surged forward, trapping the lamia against Marisa's danmaku.

"Hurry!" Marisa shouted to the sky. Her side of the danmaku prison started to thin.

Cirno dove down, grazing past stray shots as she vanished inside the swirling curtain of magic. The nymph shouted, and a chill wind blew past Alice, scattering danmaku like petals. The lamia stood in the middle of the field, riveted to the ground by a waist high prism of ice.

As the last of the danmaku flew away, the four Hunters ringed the captured monster. Squirming against the ice, the eyeless cannibal shrieked. Her shrieks turned into wails as a wooden stake burst through her chest. The monster quivered, her muscles locked in place.

"I wish Youmu was here for this," Wriggle said, pulling a heavy knife from her belt. While many monsters could shrug off bullets and buckshot, few survived decapitation. The swordswoman's grace with her sharp blade quickly cut through most monsters.

Pointing to the stake, Alice asked, "Was that necessary?"

"You know that stakes slow the real nasty ones down," Marisa said, pocketing a hand mallet.

"I already slowed her down. She's up to her waist in ice," Cirno said. Recently grown up, the nymph towered over the witch and frowned.

Wriggle rolled her eyes as she tested her blade. Circling behind the lamia, she swung the knife through the air. The heavy knife cut into the monster's neck. The lama's scream faded into quiet gurgles before turning into bitter laughter. The firefly's eyes widened as the lamia's neck healed, pushing her weapon out of the wound. The monster's chest sucked the stake backwards, sealing the hole until wood fell against tilled earth. Mists gathered as Cirno entombed the lamia inside a thick block of ice.

"Now what?" Wriggle said, holstering her pistols.

Marisa kept her automatic Saiga shotgun leveled at the monster. "I'm all for giving it lead poisoning," she said. "And if that doesn't work, there's always a Master Spark."

Alice stepped out from behind a wall of shield bearing dolls. "I haven't seen regeneration like that on anything that wasn't a werewolf or a vampire," she said, placing her hand against the thick ice. Somehow, Cirno had made it freeze as clear as glass. "Nitori, did Patchouli's notes say anything about that?"

"Just that a lamia is cursed for eating her own children," the kappa said on the radio. "So, does this mean I get to use the Dezombiefier?"

Marisa smiled. "I want to see this."

"Not today," Alice said. "A curse…this might need a shrine maiden's touch."

* * *

><p><strong>Sanae<strong>

Sanae Kochiya circled the encased monster, studying its eyeless form. It had taken her a while to climb down from the roof she had used as her perch. Nitori had dragged a number of gadgets onto the roof that she refused to leave unattended. Fortunately, Wriggle had walked by, and Sanae had pawned the heavy work onto the firefly's shoulders. "I thought she'd look like some sort of snake woman."

Marisa shrugged. "It wouldn't be the first time Patchouli was wrong."

"You mean her books," Alice said. Although the librarian wasn't technically a Hunter, the Scarlet Devil Mansion provided support for Reimu's Company. An avid researcher, Patchouli could weave through legend and myth to find whatever nugget of truth might be held within. Unfortunately, the truth didn't always make for a good tale, so sometimes she passed on flawed information. Garbage in, garbage out, or so Nitori called it.

"Don't tell her I said that. She's cute when she's pouting," Marisa said.

Sanae knelt down next to the ice and pulled out an inkbottle, a brush, and a thick roll of paper charms. Unlike her previous leather outfit, her current clothes had spacious pockets. She missed the leather, but constant attempts to dress sexier than the others resulted in three Hunters showing up to work in little more than bikinis. Reimu didn't want her company to be known as the Bikini Monster Squad, so ever since then, utility ruled over style.

"Don't you normally use a marker?" Cirno said. The nymph sat cross-legged on the ground. Occasionally, she'd throw a wet snowball at the lamia, thickening the monster's prison.

Sanae pursed her lips as she painted a complicated series of characters. "Normally, yes, if I'm only using spirit energy. But I can sense divine energy, and some gods are just as picky about how things get done as they are that they get done in the first place." Years of living with Kanako had taught her that.

"So, old ways are best?" Alice asked.

"Something like that," Sanae said. She blew on the ink before slapping the charm against the ice. The paper quivered, and she pulled her hand away before the charm sliced through the air like a dart.

"Watch it!" Cirno yelled. She pointed at the charm frozen inside a newly made wall of ice.

"I guess this means that they aren't fans of the old ways," Marisa said, standing up. "You sure you don't want me to handle this?" She patted her shotgun's stock. Somehow, the witch had mounted her elemental furnace to the rails underneath the barrel. Sanae figured Nitori would have a lot of explaining to do after Reimu saw it.

The next two charms embedded themselves deep into the ground by Sanae's feet. The priestess brushed out a different set of characters on her fourth charm. But before the ink could dry, Marisa placed a hand on Sanae's shoulder.

"My turn," the witch said, leveling the shotgun at the ice. Alice and Sanae grimaced at each other before each dove out of the way. A thick beam of coherent light lanced out, slicing through the ice and followed by five blasts of silver.

"Idiot!" Cirno yelled, waving her arms. Only a puddle at her feet remained of the ice wall she had hid behind.

Finally able to breath, the lamia added her own gasps and curses to Cirno's. Her skin glowed with the unhealthy red of multiple-degree burns that faded into a deep blistery tan. Pockmarks in her skin wept, slowly oozing to a stop as the skin closed.

"That should have worked," Marisa said, frowning over the modified Saiga shotgun's sights. "Well, if it's worth shooting once…" The lamia shook her fists at the witch.

"You had your chance," Alice said, picking herself off the ground. Shanghai flew up and perched itself on the shotgun's barrel, ruining the witch's sight picture.

"Not that I mind watching the crazy witch blast the countryside, but can you hurry up? Maintaining that takes energy," Cirno said, pointing at the makeshift prison.

"Don't tell me that you're missing out on your beauty sleep," Marisa said, snickering.

"I only need fifteen minutes, but you can't afford to miss any," the nymph snapped.

"Enough," Sanae said. She threw her fourth charm at the snarling monster. It flew true, but when the charm touched the lamia, the paper shot straight up and fluttered down to the ground.

The monster turned its eyeless gaze towards Sanae and bared serpentine teeth. She spat at the priestess, who just stepped out of the way. "Godling!" the creature hissed, speaking in Japanese for the first time.

Sanae frowned and scrawled on another charm. Stepping closer to the monster, she pulled away from its claws.

"None of that," Cirno said. Mists thickened around the lamia's arms, freezing them to the ice mound.

Sanae reached out to place the charm against the creature's forehead. Light flared with a loud pop. She instinctively pulled her hand away and noticed that the paper crumbled to ash in her hand.

The monster screamed. "Beloved winds save strength to save the wind's beloved." After speaking the final word, the creature shrunk in on itself before crumbling to dust. The Hunters stood speechless, watching the winds sweep away the last remains of the accursed mother.

* * *

><p>"What do you think she meant by that?" Sanae said, field stripping an M-4 carbine. She placed the pieces inside a hardened case and closed the lid.<p>

Wriggle shrugged, lifting the case into the back of the Company's SUV. "I'm not sure. I wasn't there, remember."

"Right," Sanae said. She looked back at the melting ice in the middle of the field. "I hope Alice hurries. I just want to leave." With the job done, Alice and Marisa had left to deal with the trickiest part of a contract; collecting payment.

"So do I," Cirno said. The leggy nymph helped Nitori carry a heavy trunk. "I've got a date."

"No fair. That's five this week," Wriggle said. The firefly guided one end of the trunk into the SUV.

"Not you too," Cirno said. "This isn't my fault." The nymph cupped her chest before loading another box. Marisa had given the ice fairy an aging pill, only to find the effects, high and full breasts, a wasp waist, and shapely legs, were permanent. Cirno enjoyed much about her new popularity, except for the fairies that mobbed her in hopes of getting an aging pill of their own.

"I'm not saying it is," Wriggle said. "Just point some of the ones you turn down my way. Not the creeps, though."

"Sanae!" The shrine maiden jumped. "Are you okay?" Nitori said, walking up to the priestess.

"'Beloved winds,'" Sanae muttered. "'Wind's beloved.'"

"Let it go," Nitori said, shaking her head. "You read Patchouli's brief. The poor thing was crazy. I'd be too, if I ate my own children. Doubly so if the gods were as cruel to me as they were to her. They should have let her die." Of all the Hunters, Nitori empathized the most with the monsters she killed. Granted, that wasn't much, as humans tended to exterminate everything around them whenever a monster killed one of their own, including innocent kappas.

"I can't get it out of my mind. I know the sound of prophecy."

"So do I," Nitori said. "And if we don't finish loading before Alice gets back, she's going to be unhappy."

"Don't tell me she's got a date too." Ever since Sanae earned a fortune for killing monsters, she had attracted nothing but creeps and freeloaders.

"Hardly. She's got this weird mix of maiden and mother that the guys don't know how to deal with," Nitori said. The kappa smiled wanly and pointed over Sanae's shoulder. "Here she comes."

Sanae glanced over her should. The blonde puppeteer stormed down the path while Marisa ran behind her. The witch called out something, and Alice spun around. The two argued until Alice turned her back and walked to the SUV.

"Hi, Alice," Cirno said, as the puppeteer passed her.

"Get in," the doll master said in a chill voice.

"Don't tell me-" Wriggle said as she opened the door.

"Let's just leave," Alice said as she sat inside the SUV.

"I'll drive," Marisa said.

"No!" Sanae said. It wasn't that Marisa was a bad driver. She approached driving with the same reckless abandon that she approached everything in life. However, reckless was not a word Sanae wanted used around an SUV filled with firearms. At the very least, the presence of firearms made explaining why she drove fifty kilometers per hour faster than the speed limit to the police a trickier endeavor.

"Relax. I've got the keys," Nitori said as she slid into the driver's seat.

"Just drive," Alice said, throwing a smart phone at Marisa. "You call her."

"I'd rather face the lamia again," Marisa said, cracking a smile. It widened as she saw Cirno and Wriggle together in the back seat. The two girls slumped over each other, asleep.

Alice glared at Marisa while Sanae sat down and closed the door. The priestess dug out a cheap paperback from the seat pouch. It was one of Suwako's weird fantasy romances, but it would pass the time.

The lamia's words remained on Sanae's mind. "Beloved winds save strength to save the wind's beloved."

Certainly, the wind goddess should treat the words as gibberish, but, as a Hunter, any loss of strength could be fatal. Would she be weaker now? The winds did fuel her magic. It also seemed inevitable that Sanae would find herself in danger once more, but she had not idea who the "wind's beloved" could be. She wasn't dating anyone, after all.

Sanae shook her head and focused on the paperback. Nitori was right; she had to let it go or else she'd drive herself crazy.

"What do you mean, 'they stiffed us!'"

Sanae's eyes snapped open. Marisa held the phone at arm's length while Reimu's voice boomed from the speaker.

"Turn that down," Nitori said as she weaved the SUV through traffic.

"Tell me that you at least can still get the PUFF." The Perpetual Unearthly Forces Fund was the American bounty system created to control deadly monsters. Since it was the oldest and best known bounty system, Hunters throughout the world tended to call all bounties by its name, regardless of where the bounty really originated.

"We can't," Marisa said, keeping the phone away from her ear. A Hunter needed physical proof of a kill to claim a bounty. All they had were tales and what little dust that the wind failed to scatter.

"Do you know how much it takes to run this Company for one day?"

"Don't send us against monsters that turn to dust when you kill them," Marisa said. Sanae looked behind her and marveled. Somehow, Cirno and Wriggle could still sleep through the tirade. She envied them. A quick glance at Alice revealed the puppeteer working on a computer tablet. Next to her, Shanghai worked on her own.

"Try not to Master Spark our payment away next time."

"It shrugged it off. It crumbled away when Sanae touched it," Marisa said, finally setting the phone by her ear.

The wind priestess slumped down in her seat, trying to make herself smaller. She felt silly. Reimu couldn't see her now. She still listened to Marisa, trying to discern exactly what Reimu might be saying from Marisa's half of the conversation.

Alice's phone rang. Shanghai tapped the smart phone's screen and handed it to the Company's secretary. Alice muttered a few words into the phone, forcing a smile.

"No, I haven't been hitting the sauce again," the witch said.

Alice sat up straight, scribbling lines of text into a small notebook. Speaking only occasionally, the puppeteer nodded as she flipped the page and continued writing.

Sanae looked over and while she could not read Alice's elegant yet small handwriting from far away, she could see a figure with at least nine zeros. The doll master had underlined the number and added several exclamation points. The priestess leaded over to read more, but Alice glared at her, tilting the notebook away from prying eyes.

One billion yen, at least. Sanae blanched at the thought. That used to be more money than she could have imagined, at least in the days before she became a professional Monster Hunter. Now it was opportunity and warning. Someone must be desperate to throw around money like that, which meant a rush job. It also meant that the job would suck. They didn't pay big bucks for easy work.

The lamia's words echoed once more in the wind priestess's mind. Sanae wished again that the infernal creature had just kept her mouth shut.

"Yeah, well, we did what we could. The monster's dead. There's nothing else we could do. Of course, if you had come with us, everything would have turned out perfect. The lamia would have given herself up without a fight, and the townies would have hailed us as heroes." Marisa's voice oozed sarcasm.

Alice covered her phone. "Keep it down. Is Reimu still on the line?"

"She hasn't hung up on me yet."

"I need to talk with her. Now."

Marisa tossed her phone over her shoulder and her seat. Shanghai caught it and flew it next to her mistress's head. "Reimu, its Alice. We have a contract proposal. Its big money, big risk, and high profile, but we've got to move on it faster than Aya." The doll master winced. "Alright, I'll let you yell some more at Marisa." Shanghai flew the phone back to the witch. "Nitori, step on it."

Sanae sighed as Alice negotiated the final details with the client and Nitori grazed through passed cars as though they were danmaku. Sometimes she hated being right.

* * *

><p><strong>Hakurei Shrine, Gensokyo<strong>

"Wake up!" Someone shook Sanae's shoulders, pressing something cold and wet into her skin. The priestess pulled away from the chill touch and opened her eyes. Cirno stood outside the parked van. The icicle she held fell into Sanae's lap.

"Don't do that!" she said, brushing the ice off her skirt and out of the van.

"We've got thirty minutes before Reimu's planning meeting," the nymph said, shrugging. "We're to get our emergency gear bags and meet her outside the shrine." Each Hunter kept a bag full of weapons, armor, and gear ready in case she had to grab it in a hurry.

"Just that?" Sanae asked, sliding out of the SUV. "From the way Alice was asking, I'm surprised we're not taking more."

"Nitori's bringing a ton of extra ammo, guns, and gadgets. Since she's bringing her Dezombiefier, I want to bring Letty." The nymph had somehow claimed a mini-cannon and had named it after her closest friend. The snow woman had yet to wake for the winter, so no one knew what she thought of the matter.

"You know Reimu doesn't like you using it," Sanae said, walking towards the portable trailer that the Company used as a locker room and storage. The ice nymph's cannon burned through so many rounds that it was rarely worth using. There may be no such thing as overkill, at least until someone has to pay for the ammunition.

"Not you too," Cirno said, pouting. She walked through the open door and stopped in front of a locker. Pulling out a full rucksack and two bags resembling soft shell guitar cases, the nymph slipped the straps over her shoulders.

Sanae pulled her own gear from her locker. Unlike most Hunters, she preferred a balance between faith and firepower. Of course, most Hunters throughout the world only put faith in firepower, but Sanae trusted more in spell cards and paper charms than firearms. Nor was she alone in the Company. Youmu exclusively trusted her swordsmanship to keep her alive, while Mima used age, treachery, and an encyclopedic knowledge of magic to end whatever crossed her path. "Any idea what we're facing?"

Cirno shook her head as she waddled outside. One of these days, she'd get Nitori to make a rucksack designed for fairy wings. "Alice won't say. Not until Reimu can talk to everyone."

Sanae frowned. "OK, so what's the rumor mill saying?"

"Bring ammo. Lots of it."

"That bad, eh? So how's this going to affect your date?"

Cirno shrugged. "I guess I'll see him this weekend." She shuffled towards another set of buildings in the opposite direction from the shrine.

"Where are you going?" Sanae said. She walked outside with short, determined steps.

Cirno smiled mischievously. "Wriggle owes me a favor."

Sanae shook her head as the nymph retreated into the distance. No matter how many times they had tried in the past, the Company had learned not to get between Cirno and her favorite gun. Hoisting her gear high on her shoulders, Sanae shuffled towards the shrine grounds.

"Heya, Sanae." A familiar straw hat popped up in front of the wind priestess. Sanae stepped away from the figure, her pack swaying on her shoulders until gravity caught it in a downward grip. The priestess's arms flailed outward as she tipped backwards and fell. Something caught her before she had dropped but a few centimeters. "Ow, you're heavy," Suwako Moriya said. In the blink of an eye, the diminutive goddess had appeared behind Sanae, pushing her priestess back on her feet.

"Don't do that to me," Sanae said, holding a hand over her heart.

"Try not to carry an entire shrine on your back," Suwako said. The ancient native goddess stepped in front of her priestess again. "It's not good for you. You'll have enough back problems when you grow up as it is."

Sanae glowered at her goddess. "I'm assuming you came here for more besides veiled complaints that my figure's closer to Kanako's than yours."

"Nitori called me. She said that you haven't been yourself all day," Suwako said, taking the weapon bag off Sanae's shoulder.

With some of the weight gone, the priestess stood straighter. "Who else should I have been?"

"Pettiness isn't like you."

"If you haven't noticed, I've got to go to work." Sanae tried to step around the child-sized goddess

Suwako shook her head as she stepped in front of Sanae. "I don't get it. You've been a priestess for a while. You've fought monsters and youkai. By the Unnamable Name, you even survived high school. You should have thicker skin. How did a monster's words get to you?"

Sanae frowned, placing her hands on her hips as she towered over the goddess. "Right before a mission starts is not the time to talk about losing powers. A monster attack is no place for weakness. You're either alive or lunch."

"You're my granddaughter. Regardless of what Kanako would like to think, you take after me, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. This old frog's still hopping while a lot of those who tried to gig her are now just footnotes in Patchouli's library."

"Yeah, but-"

"'But' nothing," Suwako said. "I've got an idea. Kneel down a bit. Careful, though, or you'll need some help getting back to your feet." The goddess placed her hand on the frog charm in Sanae's hair. Muttering words that had not been spoken aloud for centuries, she willed power into the metal and stone. The hair clip felt cold against Sanae's skin. "That should keep you through the night. As long you don't do anything foolish, that is."

Since Suwako didn't bat an eye that her granddaughter was about to fight any number of monsters sight unseen, Sanae wondered what exactly the goddess would consider foolish. "Thanks."

"Now then, you'll feel like a silly worrywart when you come back. We'll laugh about it tomorrow, just you wait. Let's go, Reimu won't forgive me if you're late." The goddess skipped away.

Sanae sighed. Maybe Suwako was right. She stepped forward, struggling to stand. "A little help, please."

Suwako laughed as she helped her priestess walk to the shrine.

* * *

><p><strong>Reimu<strong>

Reimu Hakurei stood in front of her shrine, watching her friends and fellow Hunters finish their last preparations before battle. Some, like Nitori and Wriggle, checked their weapons. Others, like Youmu and Mima, counted spell cards. Marisa packed and repacked her gear, looking for that little extra space that would let her carry one more set of slugs or another deck of spell cards. The witch believed that there was no such thing as too much ammunition, just too much to carry. Reimu agreed wholeheartedly and planned to set Nitori on that thorny problem.

First, though, she had to get all her friends back home. Their representative had been sparing with details, but UNESCO mentioned they had lost an agent in what was likely a full-fledged undead outbreak. So she couldn't fault the sudden resurgence of packrat tendencies in front of her. The shrine maiden had brought every single last spell card she could find. After all, no one liked to be outnumbered in a fight.

If you were in a fair fight, your tactics sucked. What did that imply when you found yourself on the wrong side of an unfair fight?

Reimu frowned as she watched Cirno argue with Yukari. The nymph gestured to a heavy trunk sitting behind her. Letty. Reimu should have never bought that bullet hose. She had to admit that the mini-gun looked cool back when she had no clue how much it cost to run the thing for ten seconds. Contrary to what everyone believed, she would have to ask Alice for that figure. All Reimu knew was that she could have used the money elsewhere.

Reimu was admittedly tight-fisted with the Company's money. Not for her own sake, though. After her first few jobs, she had put away enough cash to maintain her shrine and fill her pantry for the rest of her natural life. As a shrine maiden, she had no reason to hoard knickknacks or drape herself in luxury. As a Monster Hunter, though, Reimu needed to ensure that when the call came to saves lives, she had enough weapons, ammo, fuel, and training to do the job. The entire point of her frugality was that she could do more things with the money she earned than if she spent it recklessly.

The shrine maiden looked at her watch. "Yukari," she called, keeping the waiver out of her voice. The slightest hint of nervousness would spread like wildfire. The gods knew her friends needed every advantage.

The border youkai silenced Cirno with a single upraised hand. Although Yukari's face was as smooth as glass, Reimu knew that she disapproved. There would be a price for Yukari's help, one intensely more personal that getting Gensokyo's youkai off the PUFF list.

In the center of the yard, a black portal opened large enough for four people to walk through side by side. Reimu always wondered why Yukari ringed her portals with red ribbons. She also wondered why she noticed the ribbons before the portal's numerous blinking eyes.

The Hunters gathered around the portal, weapons at the ready. Marisa smiled as she ran through the gateway. As usual, the witch dove headlong into where angels, demons, or anyone wanting to die in bed feared to tread. Reimu held her breath until Marisa's head poked out between the red ribbons. The witch's hand came through and she waved the Hunters forward. Picking up her pack and her M4 carbine, Reimu took her place in line.

She watched her friends disappear inside the inky darkness one by one. Muttering a prayer to any god who might hear her, the shrine maiden closed her eyes and stepped through the portal.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

Ian Anderson is used with Mephiles666's permission as MHG's first red shirt. Thanks go out to Snowflames for alpha reading the action scene.

Check out the Let's Danmaku forums for snippets, occasional calls for red shirts, and general mayhem.


	5. Portent II: Sentinel

**Monster Hunter Gensokyo: Portent**

**Chapter 2: Sentinel**

A Touhou fanfic inspired by Larry Correia's Monster Hunter International series

-Written by Achariyth.

Disclaimer: Touhou Project belongs to ZUN. While I haven't made this a true Touhou/MHI cross-over, enough MHI influence exists that I will pull this fic if requested by representatives of ZUN, Larry Correia, or Baen Books and I also request that any site that might post this work do the same.

* * *

><p><strong>Nitori<strong>

Sanae once told me that some human philosopher said, "When you look into the abyss, the abyss looks into you." Last time I checked, that didn't mean that I should catch it trying to peek up my skirt.

I stomped hard against whatever kept me suspended in the eye-studded darkness. The offending eye blinked and closed, only to appear in front of me.

_I wish you would stop doing that._ Yukari's voice echoed in my mind. _You're traveling in the space between matter itself and you're worried about your modesty?_

"A girl's got to have her priorities straight," I said, flipping the safety on my M4 carbine. One of Yukari's disembodied eyes drifted away from the muzzle.

_It isn't like Aya hasn't photographed it before._

I had plans to settle that score with Aya...

An eye the size of a large shrine blinked open, fading into a grass-filled green field ad a deep blue sky. My friends stood in the field, their weapons trained away from the portal.

_Nitori?_

"Yes?" I said, pushing one hand against the eye or portal or whatever Yukari had made. My hand passed through air.

_Good luck._

"I thought you were going to tell me to break a leg."

_Where you're going, you shouldn't stop at one._

I shook my head and walked through the closing portal. I hate it when someone goes all mystic on me. Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with magic. After all, any sufficiently studied magic is indistinguishable from technology. But mysticism? That helpful spirit guide almost always turns out to be some eldritch abomination that wants to eat your brain. Or look up my skirt. I've worked enough jobs with Youmu's team to realize that it's easier to deal with something that actually has a living body-

"What the hell was that?"

-and that woolgathering on the job could be fatal. My eyes crossed as I focused on the barrel of the Glock 17 someone shoved in my face. She had to have been standing behind the portal for me to have missed her. I didn't recognize the willowy woman in the government-issue black pantsuit, but I did recognize the pin on her lapel as a "What Would Agent Franks Do?" pin.

What would Agent Franks do? He'd pull the trigger. A lot. Then he'd reload and do it again. The infamous monster hunter was known for his brutal efficiency. I just hoped the American Monster Control Bureau wasn't on site. It was bad enough to have a pistol waved in my face; I didn't want to survive this only to run into monsterdom's most chilling boogeyman.

"If that was one of the Old Ones, I'll burn you down right here," she said. Her voice rang with steel and confidence, although the woman would have thought twice about such bravado had she seen the eager smile on Mima's face as the ghost crept up behind her.

As sweat beaded down my brow, I raised my hands, letting my carbine dangle from a tactical sling. Glancing over at the hunters watching the stand-off with weapons drawn, I growled, "a little help here."

"What makes you think we'd have anything to do with those tentacle freaks," Marisa said. The witch smiled rakishly as she leveled her custom Saiga at my captor. I'm proud of the modifications I made to that shotgun, but right now I didn't want the street sweeper pointed anywhere near me, especially with Marisa on the trigger.

"Hold on," Reimu said as she walked up. Her hands were empty, but I knew she hid a spell card deck up her sleeves. "I'm Ms. Hakurei. I'm guessing that you're our contact."

The woman nodded as she rattled off some alphabet soup agency distantly related to the Japanese government. While I was relieved to find out that the MCB wasn't around, I should have paid attention to exactly what agency she was from. "I left my partner in that death trap to find you," she said, pointing toward the temple grounds. Her pistol never wavered from my face.

"We can help. Stop pointing that at my friend and we can talk," Reimu said. Her voice might have been calm and steady, but her Yin Yang Orbs quivered by her side.

"You didn't answer my question."

"Can we just start over?" I said, not wanting to be anywhere near the soon-to-be incoming gunfire, danmaku, mystical artifacts, and whatever magical abomination Mima was slowly casting behind my captor's back.

"An acquaintance of mine knows a little magic," Reimu said.

"She's just as human as her," Marisa said, pointing at Wriggle. Fortunately, the firefly kept her antennae under a baseball cap whenever we left Gensokyo. Wriggle smiled, but flashed Marisa a scowl as soon as the government official turned away.

"Help us so we can help her," Reimu said, rolling her eyes.

"Fine. But you're taking me with you. And if I get the slightest whiff of space squid or dark magic, I start stabbing and shooting," the gunwoman said, lowering her pistol. I dropped to my knees. Several deep breaths later, and my heart no longer wanted to beat its way out of my chest.

Mima pouted as the green glow surrounding her hands faded away. "I thought I'd be able to have some fun today," she muttered as she flew behind Marisa. Fortunately, humans have poor hearing, else I am certain the agent would have started shooting.

"You can call me...Lily." She looked just as Japanese as Reimu and Sanae. Then again, I'm the last Japanese girl that gets to complain about others having Western names. As far as I can tell, my ancestors never visited Rome.

"My partner, Kay, and I were sent to find some missing English agent that got himself lost around here. It sounded like your typical trouble consultant job, and it started out that way. Then someone emptied the graveyards on us. Kay and I got separated in the fighting, and I got the phone call to meet up with you. She's still alive; I could hear gunfire just before you all appeared out of nowhere."

"You said a graveyard?"

"Literally. Dozens and dozens of decaying corpses and walking skeletons. More like a city crowd than what you'd expect out here."

"Necromancer," Marisa and Mima said together. Murmurs rippled though the assembled hunters. I confess that my breath caught in my throat.

Let me put this in perspective. The temple here is over a thousand years old. That's forty generations of be-fruitful-and-multiply-like-rabbits humanity living, dying and burying each other in the shadow of the temple. No necromancer could resist all those basic building materials for their rituals. No monster hunter could pass up the bounties either. 500,000 yen per zombie adds up quickly in an undead outbreak, and that's not counting the special "dead or alive" bounty for bringing in the necromancer who started it. Not everyone is mercenary enough to see a zombie horde as an opportunity to make a quick buck, but Reimu just pegged my research and development budget to the number of bounties we bring in each month.

"Did you see him?" Reimu asked. She waved her hand in large circles and we huddled around her.

Lily shook her head. "I didn't see anyone alive after the zombies started coming."

"What's the plan?" Youmu asked. The pale team leader crouched next to Reimu, her ghost half trailing mist as it circled her.

"We're here to contain this outbreak first. We also need to find Agents Kay and Anderson as well," Reimu said. "I really want this necromancer, too. I don't want any more people killed because he wants to play with dark powers."

"So, one team or two?" Alice asked. The doll maker was the jack of all trades that kept the Company running. Like me, she didn't belong to either team.

Reimu pursed her lips as she though. "Three. Team Reimu, Team Youmu, and Team Alice." Team Alice meant the support types stuck together. Don't make the mistake that support means weak, though. "However, I need Reisen to go with Alice."

"I don't like splitting my team up. You're leaving me shorthanded," Youmu said, frowning. "We need more people."

"We'll deal with that when we get back. I'll give you Sanae in the mean time," Reimu said. "My team will go into the temple and raise a huge fuss to draw all the undead towards us. Meanwhile, Team Youmu will try to find the missing agents and the necromancer. Alice, I want you, Reisen, and Nitori to provide overwatch. If it shambles, shoot it."

"You forgot about me," Lily said. "Not that it matters. I'm going with her." The contractor pointed at the half-ghost girl.

Reimu sighed. "Fine. Oh, and Mima?"

"Yes?" the sleepy-eyed ghost said.

"Consider yourself off the leash. Just remember that Youmu can change that at any time," Reimu said. She held the malicious ghost's eye until Mima gave a curt nod. There's history between those two, but Reimu changes the subject whenever I ask. Mima, on the other hand, threatened to grind my bones to make her bread if I ever asked her about her past again. Nor did I understand how Youmu, out of all creatures, was supposed to stop Mima. The gentle swordswoman never struck me as a disciplinarian. Perhaps there's honor among ghosts or something, not that Mima and honor ever belong in the same sentence.

"Any questions?" Reimu said. The shrine maiden waited, looking into each of our eyes. "No, then? Let's do this."

* * *

><p>"I should be with her," Reisen said, looking through a pair of field glasses. I raised my own in enough time to see Youmu turn and wave. Next to me, the rabbit waved back, a silly grin spreading on her face.<p>

Ever since Reimu started the Company, each of us have had to deal with pernicious suitors. Youth, beauty, and money make an irresistible combination for many young men. Youmu also has to worry about being in the center of Sakuya and Reisen's affections. Either the poor ghost girl can't make up her mind, or she enjoys the attention. As for me, a lazy man I won't maintain.

These days, being anywhere near Youmu's little soap opera gives me a migraine. By rights, Reimu should have split the three of them up weeks ago. Too bad we don't have enough people to do that. Besides, do you want to be the one to tell the alien rabbit sharpshooter and the knife-crazy time-stopping maid that they can't see Youmu anymore?

I thought not.

Alice sighed as she knelt down next to Shanghai so that the doll could crawl up into her mistress's arms. "Well, let's try to help her as best as we can. Where's the best spot for you?" she asked the company's sharpshooter.

Reisen stared at the temple grounds before looking around. "There," she said, pointing to a small grassy hill. Sure, there might not be cover, but we're fighting monsters and not humans. Your average zombie is only concerned with food, and anything smarter probably already knows we're here, so why hide?

"Let's go," Alice said. She nodded to me and I set out towards the hill, Alice and Reisen following behind me.

Sorry to disappoint you, but we made it to the hill without incident. Not everything happens like in those movies Remilia and Sanae watch compulsively. So, I have no tales of zombie swarms, courageous last stands, or frantic attempts to pull Reisen away from some thing's maw. We didn't see a single walking dead, and Reimu's squad still hadn't fired a shot either.

What kind of undead outbreak lacks the undead?

Reisen fussed over an M21 rifle, adjusting the bipod and the scope according to her whims. She pulled out a smart phone and set it by the rifle's side. Settling behind the weapon's scope, she removed her hat, letting her ears stand free.

I took out my field glasses and scanned around until I saw a flash of red and white armor against the main temple's white walls. After that, finding the black and blue blurs that were Marisa and Cirno proved easy. Reimu's team bantered as they settled into their firing positions around the temple's side entrance.

"-all I'm saying is that it's mighty convenient," Wriggle said as I switched frequencies on my radio. "If a necromancer was trying to hide from us, claiming to be an agent looking for her partner is the perfect cover. I mean, no one asked to see her badge."

"That includes you too, glowworm," Cirno snapped as she put the finishing touches on a short ice wall.

"So what do you want us to do?" Youmu whispered over the radio.

"Well, Sakuya can-" Wriggle began as she crept along the wall towards the door.

"I'm not a pickpocket," Sakuya snapped over the air. "Ask Marisa if you need petty theft."

"Just when you have a moment, ask to see her badge," Reimu said, drowning out Marisa's caustic retort. She knelt behind one of Cirno's icy creations. "If she doesn't have one, we'll let Mima play with her until she tells the truth."

"Do you promise?" the ghost said into Youmu's mike. I felt a chill as I settled behind my carbine's sights. No one deserved Mima's full attention.

"Enough chatter. Alice, are you ready?" Reimu asked.

Alice looked over at me. I flashed her a quick thumb's up. "Ready."

The plan's simple; Reisen shoots, Alice spots, and I keep the both of them alive. I like this plan. It means that the fates have to work harder to drench me in blood and monster ichor like they do every mission. "Open it, Wriggle," Reimu said.

The firefly appeared in my scope. She fumbled with the lock and chain for a moment and stopped. She pulled off her baseball cap and her antennae twitched. A few seconds later, the chain fell to the ground. The door exploded outwards, sending the firefly rolling. Bodies tumbled out of the doorway, stacking up in a tangled dog pile of desiccation and rot. The uppermost bodies rolled down and pulled themselves across the ground towards Wriggle.

CRACK!

Wriggle scooted away from a now headless corpse. Three more zombies rolled over the body, reaching out to pull the bug into their gaping mouths.

I fired rapidly into the writhing tangle of bodies, careful not to aim near Wriggle. My aim's decent, but nowhere near Reisen's. From behind the ice, Reimu and Marisa added their fire to the mix. Silver-tipped lead cut through sudden thickening mists.

In the blink of an eye, the fog turned to ice trapping the undead. What had began as a surge of mindless carnivorous flesh turned into a turkey shoot. A zombie's bite might doom you into turning into one, but put a bullet in the brain pan, and you no longer have to worry about it. The ice blanket just turned them into something like pop-up targets at a range.

My next shot took my target in the shoulder, as did the next. I shook my head and placed my weapon on safe. A body shot does nothing but enrage a zombie, and, honestly, its Reisen's job to kill monsters at range, not mine.

Alice called out minor corrections after each of Reisen's shots. Meanwhile, Reimu's team finished turning squirming lifeless husks into headless corpses. In a short time, nothing moved but the living.

Panting, Cirno walked over to where Wriggle stood. The firefly's shoulders slumped, and she holstered her pistols. She smiled as Cirno spoke to her. I hope it was encouragement; for all I know, they were comparing score. The Newbies were odd like that. Of course, they were only still Newbies because no one else had made it through the Gut Crawl.

"I wonder what Youmu's doing?" Reisen said. The rabbit rolled onto her side, tapping out variables on her smart phone's screen.

"Stay sharp," Alice snapped, still looking through her binoculars.

"Worry about yourself," Reisen said and scowled. She made adjustments to her M21, presumably from feedback from her smart phone app. I reached back and pulled a canteen out. A few gulps later, I sighed contentedly.

CRACK!

Once again, Reisen's shot was our first warning. Raising the carbine's scope to my eye, I watched an improbable mass of bleached bones charge towards Marisa. Its head snapped back as Reisen's next shot sent chips flying from its bare skull, yet the monster kept coming. The witch stepped back, her automatic shotgun barking as she emptied her magazine in seconds. Bone and sparks flew as the thing staggered, yet the tough monster kept coming. Marisa side-stepped out of its reach and cracked it across the head with her weapon's butt stock. A second blow drove it to the ground. Flipping the weapon around, she slapped a card against the elemental furnace slung underneath the barrel. The bony monstrosity vanished within a brilliant beam of yellow light.

I shivered, remembering my first encounter with a Master Spark. I didn't want to imagine what one at point-blank range felt like, especially since I know how many times Marisa has boosted the spell since then.

The light faded, leaving a jumbled pile of bones smoldering on the ground. The mass twitched and fell still. Marisa tapped the pile gingerly with her foot, sending the skull rolling.

"What was that?" I asked over the radio.

Reimu knelt next to the bones. "Must be a ghoul. What it's doing out here in the daylight is beyond me."

"Why do you say that?" Cirno asked. So I wasn't the only one that slept through that day in training.

"Look what Marisa's overgrown flashlight did to it," she said. "Which reminds me, Nitori, how are we looking for fire?"

I checked my pockets. "I've got a lighter."

Reimu's sigh came in loud and clear over the radio. "This is more Sanae's forte than mine," she said as she pulled out a paper charm. The shrine maiden dropped the paper onto the bones. The pile flared white, leaving only ash behind.

I pulled out my own smart phone. A quick search through a monster hunter database showed me a few things about ghouls that I had missed. The short version: skeletal zombies on crack that can soak up a ton of damage and hate both light and fire. The shorter version: smash or burn the bones for a 2,000,000 yen bounty. Maybe that's what Yukari meant by her last cryptic words.

"There has to be a necromancer around then," Marisa said, reloading her shotgun. "Nocturnal undead don't walk around in the daytime without some sort of compulsion."

"Could it be fear?" Alice asked.

"More likely it's the all-you-can-eat buffet we just served up," Marisa said, waving a hand over the dead bodies. Ghouls were carrion eaters. "But fear might work too."

"Let's keep going," Reimu said as she scattered more charms on the piles of dead. "There's got to be more inside."

* * *

><p>"White seven," Alice called out, using the color clock code to draw Reisen's attention to a target. Reisen shifted her aim and fired. The doll maker sighed. "Can't we go back to our normal ammo?"<p>

"I swear someone just took whatever crappy ammo that they had in the warehouse and painted the tips bile green," Reisen said. She dropped her magazine and ejected a sickly green round. "Sorry, Nitori, but this isn't one of your better ideas." She loaded another magazine into her rifle. A few seconds later, a zombie collapsed, headless.

"I had to try," I said as I scanned the fields. Our typical ammunition uses a silver bead inside the cavity of a lead round. It's a special load, and expensive. So when a company released a line of commercial grade zombie killing ammunition, I couldn't resist picking up a case or two.

"Nitori, just admit that you're trying to get Reimu to buy you a helicopter," Reisen said. "We can fly already. What do you need it for."

"We can carry more gear and it'll be a steady platform for a sharpshooter," I said, talking quickly. Ever since the ride out to Tsukishima, I had been bitten by the flying bug, and everyone knew it. "Besides, it'll be cool."

"You know Marisa will just take it joyriding," Alice said.

"I'll just have to risk it," I said. "It's for the good of the Company."

CRACK!

"Much better," Reisen purred.

"I swear, we spend too much time playing with toys," Alice said. "And we forget them when we really need them. Firestarters, for instance, would be useful right about now."

I winced as the burn grew in my cheeks. "I wasn't the only one who forgot."

"That's why I'm glad we're not clearing rooms," Reisen said. The rabbit looked pale. Moon rabbits put up a good front, but they spooked easily. "We've already had one ghoul walking in daylight. What else will we see today?"

"You just had to tempt fate, didn't you?" I muttered.

"Reisen, relax. Reimu will seal away whatever we find," Alice said. "Or Marisa will just Master Spark it through three walls." The doll master turned and scowled at me. I gulped, catching her unspoken message. Hopefully the temple had a bunch of chemicals I could kludge together into flame.

A moody silence shrouded us, punctuated only by Alice's low murmurs and the percussive blasts from Reisen's M21. I didn't have much to do besides stew in my own thoughts. Although the zombies seemed to be increasing since Wriggle opened the door to the walled temple, Reisen's steady hands sent bullets into undead brains before any could draw near. I found myself searching further and further away, hoping to catch sight of something, anything, besides dead bodies, ruined fields, and empty buildings. As if rewarded by a perverse god, I saw a flicker of movement.

Many zombies shambled around a guest house half obscured by the main temple's walls. Up to this point, we had seen only a scattering of isolated undead walking outside the temple, now the hungry bodies swarmed around the house like locusts.

"Black eleven," I called out using the color clock code to tell Alice and Reisen to look at the rear left corner of the temple. Reisen exaggerated a sigh as she tapped frantically on her smart phone.

"It's a little long for me, but I can try."

"Look!" Alice hissed and pointed. A second-story window slid a few centimeters upwards long enough for a white sheet to tumble out of the building and unfurl. My breath caught in my throat when I saw a single character smeared onto the sheet in a dull red already fading to brown:

HELP!

"Reimu, Youmu, come in," Alice barked into her headset.

"A little busy here, Alice," Reimu whispered into her headset. "Marisa found some playmates." In the background, the witch yelled out her signature attack.

"We're here, Alice. Keep it down," Youmu whispered. "We're not alone."

I sat up and swapped out empty magazines in my web gear for full ones in my backpack while Alice filled Reimu in with what we saw.

"Go save them, Alice," Reimu said somberly. "You're the only ones that can."

* * *

><p>We walked towards the temple in a triangle. Alice took the point, while Shanghai flew ahead of the puppeteer. I kept to the side closest to the temple and trained my carbine at the windows and doors we neared. I couldn't help but be jumpy, especially since Reimu reported seeing another ghoul. Anything that could shrug off a full magazine from Marisa's shotgun wasn't something I wanted to stumble across. Meanwhile, Reisen kept a steady eye on the fields. She had slung her M21 rifle across her back, and now pointed a Glock 18 machine pistol at the ground. She had used it once already to make quick work of some sort of revenant that rushed towards us. Fortunately, it proved no tougher than a zombie, only quicker.<p>

Ahead of us, at least three dozen walking corpses pushed and pounded against the guest house. The help sign had long been pulled down by blood-frenzied undead, but whoever had barricaded themselves inside the building had chosen well. If it weren't for the fear stink undoubtedly flooding from the building, the zombies would have just wandered away.

Alice stopped and tossed two cards in front of Shanghai. A line of dolls appeared in front of us, each holding an oversized shield. By this time, the first zombies began to turn and stagger towards us. Normally, I'd say to never attack from upwind, but there are people in there counting on us.

Words I had never heard before twisted at my gut. I looked over and saw Alice standing straight and proud. She bellowed the words once more. Gritting my teeth, I rode out the wave of power. Reisen actually stumbled. Death and the infernal affected her the most out of anyone in the Company.

A wall of undead flesh turned away from the building. Those creatures who still had vocal cords hissed their own challenge as they shambled towards us.

They say Death has a daughter...

GO, Alice said. Whatever she had become pointed towards the building. I tapped a spell card taped to the side of my carbine. My Optical Illusion card covered me as I faded from sight. The undead could still hear and smell me, but that's what danmaku and my M4 are for.

I ran in a long looping curve towards the guest building. Lasers, shot, and bullets shredded the leading edge of the undead wall. My own danmaku burst like fireworks, washing over those shamblers who lacked the ears to hear Alice's challenge. I didn't stop to fire my weapon, relying instead on speed, stealth and magic to carry me through the ravenous undead.

More zombies ringed the door as I drew near. Optical Illusion fell away, as did a single glowing card. With a flash, Water Curtain swept away the last zombies with a torrent of water. Stopping to catch my breath, I reached out for the doorknob. Unease flooded through me, but I thought it was left over from whatever power Alice had tapped with her words. My hand touched metal.

Immediately, my vision filled with white. My hand sizzled against the metal, and I could hear and feel showers of sparks popping all around me...

...I woke up, hopefully just mere seconds later. Something had thrown me ten meters away. Smoke drifted from my flesh as I shook purple afterimages from my sight. I blame Reimu; some people who live around shrines and temples actually have faith. Purification _hurt_. I stood up, in enough time to see three zombies lurching towards me. Six shots from my 1911 took care of that.

"Nitori, what happened?" Reisen called over the radio.

"I'm fine. Just a little purer than normal," I said, looking at the building. How could I get in there? There had to be another way besides knocking on the door and saying, "I'm a monster and I'm here to help you." Figuratively, that is; I couldn't even touch the door. More bony corpses shuffled towards me.

"Hey! Hey!" I shouted, waving one arm over my head. The noise brought even more attention from the crowd of undead oozing out of the temple. My free hand clutched my pistol's grip. I kept shouting, while the zombies kept coming.

A second story window slid open. "Go away!" a shrill female voice called out in a stage whisper. "You'll bring more here."

"Let me in," I said, dropping to a knee. The sights lined up on the closest zombie's head. "I can help."

"We need an army, not a girl who's too young to have had her first kiss."

My cheeks reddened as my pistol barked three times. How did she-? "Just let me in."

"Will it shut you up?"

"Only if whoever's in there praying knocks it off."

"What?"

"I'm covered in zombie sludge. You think that reacts well to faith?" I shouted, placing my back against the house's wall. Hopefully they didn't notice my clean armor. Knowing my luck, it won't remain that way.

I slid along the wall towards the door, firing my carbine as quickly as I could squeeze the trigger. Something grabbed the handle on my armor. I screamed as I was pulled inside. A hand covered my mouth while someone whispered soothing sounds in my ear. The door closed in front of me.

"Start talking, little girl," a woman in blood-soaked shrine maiden's garb said as she shoved me into the wall. Her hand came off of my mouth.

"I'm Nitori Kawashiro. The government sent me to help."

The woman's eyes narrowed. "Tell me why I shouldn't toss you back out there right now."

"We got here as fast as we could," I snapped, tapping my carbine's handguards.

"Wait, there's more like you?"

I nodded. "We've been thinning out those zombies ever since we got here."

The shrine maiden stared at me as though she were taking measure of my soul. "Come upstairs," she said, releasing me.

* * *

><p>Reisen pursed her lips as she tore cravats from a bed sheet. She knelt down, wrapping up cuts and a swollen ankle with the cloth.<p>

"Were any of them bitten?" Alice murmured to Reisen. For all the lunar rabbit's medical training, there were some things she just couldn't cure.

"You never talk about that in front of patients," Reisen said, tightening a cravat. "And no."

"You mind not talking about me like I'm not here," Reisen's patient said. She winced with each pull on the cloth. "Sugar, you mind going easy on that?"

I huddled in the corner and peered out the window through my carbine's scope. Fortunately, it was quiet out there. Alice and Reisen cleared the area of undead before they joined me inside the guest house.

"If you don't mind me asking, Chie," Alice said to the raven-tressed shrine maiden next to her. "What's a Shintoist doing in a Buddhist temple?"

The petite shrine maiden sighed. Unlike Reimu, she more traditional robes. "There's a shrine on the temple grounds as well. And I saw someone today-" Chie trailed off, her cheeks reddening.

"I haven't felt faith like that in years," I said, flexing my now bandaged hand. Sanae's faith was in goddesses she could see, and if Reimu hadn't grown up around a shrine, she'd likely be agnostic, if not apathetic. Chie's cheeks reddened further.

"So what are a bunch of girls doing out here?" the shrine maiden asked.

"We're monster hunters," Alice said. Chie stared at the puppeteer, blinking.

"They're legit. I've seen their work before," Kei said

"How would you know?" Chie asked. Kei fished out a badge and tossed it to the other women. Chie's eyes widened further as she looked at the badge in her hands and tossed it back.

"You know we can't stay here," Alice sub-vocalized in her headset as she looked at me.

"I know, but how are we going to everyone out of here?" I asked, making sure I spoke no louder than she did.

Alice smiled as she danced a spell card across her knuckles. "Don't worry about that. Worry about the zombies outside."

"Are these real?" Kei asked, giving one of Reisen's long ears a sharp tug.

Reisen winced as she tried to free her abused ear. "Ow! Stop!"

Alice shook her head. "I warned her to keep those under her hat." The doll master hid a smile as she settled next to me in the corner. "You might want to help her out. I'll keep watch." Shanghai walked around the room, tidying up. Guess Alice couldn't deal with staying in a messy room.

I darted over towards where Kei was crushing Reisen in her arms like a young child. The rabbit clawed at the woman's hold. Reisen caught my eyes and mouthed, "Help me!" At least her eyes didn't flash; I hate being mind-controlled.

'Do you know anyone named Lily?" I asked the first thing that came to mind.

"So that's what she's calling herself," Kei said, letting Reisen go. A bemused smile lit up her face. The rabbit stumbled away, massaging her throat. "Tall, willowy, got a Men-in-Black cosplay thing going on?"

I nodded, wincing as Reisen threw her medical pack at me. "You fix her," she snapped as I caught the green bag. What was I supposed to do? Mummify Kei?

"That's Yuri, all right. Where did you see her? She's buying the next round whenever we catch back up," Kei said.

Chie frowned. "If you see her again."

"I'm not worried. Yuri and I have been some crazy shit before," Kei said, laughing. "This mess doesn't even take the cake. Not even close."

"That's... reassuring?" Chie said, inching away from Kei. "But would you please watch your mouth. This is holy ground." I bit my tongue. There's a walking graveyard outside that says otherwise.

"So where is Yuri?" Kei asked. Turning towards me, she pointed to her ankle. "C'mon, wrap it tight, won't you?"

Sighing, I spun an Ace bandage around Kei's ankle. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as Reisen knelt, her lips moving as she fished through her backpack. It didn't take much to read the name on her lips: Youmu. A quick flick of the radio's dial, and I eavesdropped on her conversation.

"Her name's Yuri, Youmu, Yuri!"

"Is she alright?" Chie asked, kneeling next to Reisen.

The rabbit jumped, laughing nervously. "I thought-"

"Your partner... Yuri, was it? She mentioned something about a necromancer," Alice said, cutting in smoothly. She caressed her ever-present leather tome.

Kei's eyes narrowed. "What would you know about that?"

"Yuri told us. She's with some friends. She's safe, or at least as safe as you can get around here," the puppet master said. Turning towards me, she mouthed, "Mima."

I hid my wince in a cough as I tucked in the tail end of the ankle wrap. Personally, I'd rather take my chances with the rampaging undead hordes.

"So about that necromancer," Alice asked, leveling a cool gaze at Kei. Shanghai hovered in front of the agent with her miniature arms crossed.

"How's that flying?" Kei asked as she poked Shanghai.

"Radio control," I said quickly, pulling Shanghai away and setting the doll on the ground.

"The necromancer?" Alice asked in a huff.

Kei shook her head. "All we saw was some shrouded figure starting some crazy ritual in the graveyard. We tried to stop him, but Yuri and I spent most of our time running away after that."

"How much longer until Reimu gets here?' I asked as a shadow flew across the window. My M4 snapped into position. "Look out!"

Shards flew inward as a clawed hand punched through the glass. Black claws raked Alice's armor and the puppeteer and her puppet fell limp. Red eyes glared at me from a mostly human face. It could only be a wight.

The first thunderclaps drowned out Chie's screams as Reisen and I opened fire. The creature soaked up the silver-tipped lead, twitching occasionally as bullets perforated its body. Blackened nails reached for the paralyzed Alice, seeking her throat.

I couldn't touch it, or I would end up like Alice, trapped by my own body, frozen in fear. Otherwise, I would have barreled into the wight and knocked it out the window. I threw a spell card between Alice and the wight, willing a wall of water between the two. Water and danmaku burst forth like a busted water main, hurling the undead body out the window.

My lungs burned as I stopped to catch my breath. Reisen, too, took a series of deep breaths before rushing over to Alice. To my surprise, Kei had her own smoking Glock out and trained at the window. I had half-expected that she would have joined the priestess huddled on the ground.

"How is she?" I asked.

Reisen's eyes glowed as she shook her head. "If we can stop that thing, she'll recover. I might be able to speed that up, though. I think I've isolated the right wavelength, but-"

Wood shattered downstairs. "There's no time," I said, running towards the stairs. "Hide!"

"Not a chance," Kei said, loading a fresh magazine into her pistol.

"Chie, go," Reisen said. "And start praying."

I grimaced as I looked down the staircase. Within minutes, I'd find myself trapped between the wight's claws and searing faith. A dark shape flickered below, and I flooded the staircase with water and danmaku. Nothing, not even Wriggle's mites could make it through that deluge.

"Nitori!" Reisen screamed. I was buffeted by deafening echoes of gunfire, amplified by the narrow space. My earplugs took the edge off, but my ears would be ringing for days. I spun about, peppering the wight with lead as it dropped into the room from the shattered window. Reisen stood in front of Alice, her Glock spitting out its own stream of silvery lead. The wight spun, swinging its claws through Reisen...

...who vanished, only to appear several feet away. Her red eyes faded as she reloaded in an instant, and then returned to hammering the wight with short bursts.

My own magazine ran dry. I flung Water Carpet at the wight again, hoping to push it back out the window. We needed to play for time until Reimu's team got here.

The wight, a lord of the undead, bounded over the water spray. Black claws reached out for me, ready to tear me open. My armor would protect me from the claws, but not from the paralytic touch. Falling backwards, I stumbled down the stairs and landed on my back, gasping. Cold water seeped through my armor.

A wave of golden light pulsed through the second story, sending a deeper chill through my body. An inhuman scream tore through the air as the wight threw itself out of the field of holiness and down the stairs. Tendrils of light steamed off the abomination like fire.

I rolled frantically out of the way. The lifeless husk nearly crushed me as it slammed into the ground. Scrambling to my feet, I tapped another Optical Camouflage card and faded out of view. Silver and danmaku ripped at the wight as it tried to rise to its feet.

Looking untouched by the streams of bullets, the wight sported what appeared to be a bad sunburn, blisters and all. While the glowing red eyes searched for me, it sniffed the air, although how it could smell anything besides cordite was beyond me.

My heart pounded in my ears as I walked slowly around a table, praying desperately that my boots wouldn't squeak against the wet floor. I held my breath and pressed a spell card against the wall. The movement drew the red eyes, sending the undead barreled across the room. Smashing the table, its claws dug into the wall just under the spell card. Light flared, and water and magic took the undead monster in the face.

Slipping and grazing through the danmaku, I let my stealth fall away. Bouncing from wall to wall, I slapped spell card after spell card against walls, furniture, floor, anything that found itself within my reach. Weaving through the rapidly thickening spray and shot, I sought any way out the building. Chie's prayers had flooded the second story with faith, blocking off that escape. I saw the shattered door and dove out, rolling to my feet. Running away from the guest house, I felt rather than saw the spray as the spell cards burned through their magic for half a minute.

As the last of the water fountained out of the holes in the house, the wight stumbled out of the front door. His eyes no longer glowed brightly, instead burning dully like metal as it quenched. Steam rose from its body. I raised my carbine, watching as it staggered towards me. I fired one long burst of lead at the wight, and it toppled over, the fire fading from its eyes. My heart pounded so hard, I could feel my pulse in my fingertips.

I kept my carbine trained on the husk, watching and waiting for the smallest twitch. Perhaps it had finally succumbed to all the damage hurled at it, or it might be playing possum. There was only one way to make sure. I pulled out my knife, and set out to do the grisly yet necessary work of ensuring the wight never moved again.

I knew I wouldn't be able to keep my armor clean today...

* * *

><p>Reisen shuffled out of the ravaged house, leading a procession of the wounded. The doll maker lay lifeless, draped over the rabbit's back.<p>

"How bad is she?" I asked, standing over the now headless wight. Once again, fate conspired to cover me in ichor and blood. But compared to Alice, I'd gotten off lightly.

"She's been purified, but she'll pull through once we get her to Eirin," Reisen said. The medic knelt down and gingerly rolled Alice onto the ground and over on her side. Reisen set Shanghai down next to her mistress. "If we can get out of here."

I winced. Alice had been trapped in the field of faith by the wight's paralytic touch. It must have felt like she was being roasted alive, unable to move or scream. But it should have affected Reisen as well. "How did you-?"

"I'm a lunar rabbit, not a youkai," Reisen said, checking Alice's breathing and pulse. "My people hate impurity and practically live in holiness. There's no way that could hurt me."

"Sorry about your friend," Kei said. She hopped around, balancing against Chie's shoulder.

"I didn't mean to," Chie said, looking abashed.

"If you hadn't done what you did, chances are that we would have all ended up in worse shape," Reisen said. 'On the other hand, her mother won't be pleased to hear of this."

"I'm more worried about Reimu," I said. She had been a wreck after I had fallen seriously ill during the Tsukishima job. Seeing Alice like this...

"She's got to find out sooner or later," Reisen said, staring straight at me.

I pursed my lips and shook my head. With Alice hurt, responsibility for the team fell to me. That meant it was my job to tell Reimu what had happened. "I know."

"We're not going to be safe out here much longer," Kei said. The trouble consultant kept a tight grip on her pistol as she scanned the nearby fields and buildings. "But we can't go back inside." Eight spell cards in a circle had gutted the lower floor.

A shrill bird-call rang out. "That's a night sparrow," Chie said. She stopped, listened, and looked at me quizzically. "There aren't any around here."

"It's our friends," Reisen said. Sure enough, Wriggle poked her head and her antennae out from around a corner. The firefly waved at us, smiling.

"Are those-?" Chie asked.

"She's...an odd sort of cosplayer," I lied. When would our youkai learn to look human?

"Is Yuri with them?" Kei asked.

"Not this group," I said, watching her face fall.

Reimu, Cirno, Marissa, and Wriggle left the building at a fast walk. Spreading out into a wedge, they crossed the ground between the temple and the guest house rapidly. The Newbies dropped to a knee on either side of my ragged team, while Marisa knelt next to Alice. Reisen blanched under the witch's curt and insistent interrogation.

"What happened?" Reimu said, standing impassively in front of me. As I filled her in on the fight against the wight, the shrine maiden's face grew taunt, as if someone had stretched skin over rock. She closed her eyes, bowed her head, and quenched away the slightest of tremors. Her will asserted itself, and she raised her head. "Alright," she said, with steel edging her voice. "Let's move."

"The main hall?" Marisa said, tucking Shanghai into her web gear. "Are you sure we want to go to ground?"

"We don't have a choice," Reimu said. "Not with our wounded. Besides, we can just dig in, raise a fuss, and take care of anything that comes our way. Take point."

"I don't think so." Marisa draped one of Alice's arms over her shoulder. Reisen stepped in to take Alice away from the witch, but Marisa's glare convinced her otherwise. Reimu frowned, and began to speak.

"I'll take it," I said, cutting in. Sure, walking point sucked; if anyone was going to be eaten first, it'd be me, but it beat an argument. Loud and boisterous attracted zombies without fail

We set off in a loose triangle, with myself at the point, the Newbies at the wings, and everyone else inside. Reimu whispered directions to me as we walked into the temple grounds proper. Occasionally, I'd step around some of her team's handiwork, either piles of ash or well-perforated bodies. All in all, it was quiet, and after that fight with the wight, I preferred it that way.

"Youmu, come in," Reimu repeated as we eased down the covered hallway. "I hate being split up like this." How her tune changed after Alice got hurt.

"We need more people," Marisa said, shuffling behind me. The witch's armor was heavy enough without adding Alice and all her gear. I'd have to look into modifying the armor when this is over.

"One thing at a time," Reimu said. She returned to trying to raising Youmu on the radio.

"Maybe they ran out of batteries," I said as I stepped in front of a large set of double doors. "Have you been inside yet?"

"No."

Shaking my head, I waved everyone away from the doors. Remembering Wriggle's earlier surprise, I teased the doors open just wide enough to peek inside. No red eyes, no rotten flesh, nothing waiting on the other side to knock me down and take a bite. I pushed the doors open, flattening myself against the nearest. My carbine searched the room, zigzagging from near and low to far and high.

"What the hell is that?" I shouted. Something desiccated and withered filled my sights. I lifted my head from the stock long enough to see brown, papery corpses mounted high in alcoves all around. My finger immediately went to the carbine's trigger as I lined up for a head shot.

"Stop!" Chie called out. "Those are priceless!" You could have fooled me. They looked like they'd either stagger towards flesh at any moment or collapse into a cloud of dust. Chie left Kei resting against Reisen's shoulder and rushed in front of me. I lowered my weapon. "Those are holy relics and cultural treasures. Besides, they're fragile, so the temple keeps them behind glass."

"Hello, we have a necromancer running around," Marisa said, carrying Alice with her. "Going inside seems like sticking your head in the lion's mouth."

"These are _sokushinbutsu_, monks who embalmed themselves in death," Chie said. "The temple considers them Buddhas, holy, incorruptible."

"Let's not put that to the test," I said.

Reimu pursed her lips. She looked over to Kei and Alice and sighed. "We need a break, and, honestly, this is the best place-"

"Except for the creepy mummies," Marisa muttered, eying the shriveled husks.

Reisen helped Kei hop over to Marisa. "I need to check Alice and Kei out. All this moving around isn't helping them and I'm worried about Alice."

"Is there anything closer or more secure?" Reimu asked, looking at Wriggle and Cirno. The two Newbies shook their heads. The shrine maiden sighed. "Go inside. I'll ward the glass."

Grumbling, we got to work, setting up a barricade of tables and whatever furniture we could find. True to her word, Reimu tossed evil-repelling charms at each glass prison. Chie added her own charms as well. Hunkering down behind the overturned wood, I tried to raise Youmu once more. Static greeted me. I strained to make sense of the noise, but I could hear nothing.

Then, just for a moment, I thought I could hear Sakuya's voice mumbling something indistinct. Something surged through the room, like darkness embodied and given force, knocking everyone onto the floor. I looked up to see the last of the wards burn away in a cold black flame. Dozens of withered eyes opened, taking on a familiar nightmarish red glow. Glass cracked with every blow from the animated mummies, as something from beyond the grave gave dry atrophied muscles the strength of industrial machines.

For what we are about to receive, Suwako, make us grateful...

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

Thanks go to Snowflames, Captain Vulcan, Wolfsbane706, and everyone else at the Let's Danmaku forum for providing input and inspiration on the writing and the technical aspects of this part. All mistakes are my own.


	6. Portent III: Seeker

**Monster Hunter Gensokyo: Portent**

**Chapter 3: Seeker**

A Touhou fanfic inspired by Larry Correia's Monster Hunter International series written by Achariyth.

Disclaimer: Touhou Project belongs to ZUN. While I haven't made this a true Touhou/MHI cross-over, enough MHI influence exists that I will pull this fic if requested by representatives of ZUN, Larry Correia, or Baen Books and I also request that any site that might post this work do the same.

* * *

><p><strong>Sanae<strong>

The wall of desiccated bodies lurched forward, the line only broken as they stumbled around the occasional tombstone. Arms stretched out, reaching, the undead bore down on a single white-haired young woman shrouded in mist. Setting her feet, she hefted a long studded iron rod high into the air.

"A little help here," Sanae shouted as she flung paper charms at the pressing crowd. As the last left her hands, she snatched up the carbine hanging from a strap and shot it until the magazine emptied. Ducking behind a tombstone, the priestess opened another deck of paper charms. Next to her, the willowy dark-haired trouble contractor, Lily, stood up and shot the last of her Glock's rounds. Bodies fell, pressed into the earth by the relentless mob.

"You can't rush genius," Mima said. The ghost materialized by Sanae's shoulder and stared at the oncoming zombie horde over tented fingers.

"Try," Sakuya snapped, peppering the throng in front of Youmu with silver-tipped lead. She stared at where the ghostly swordswoman stood motionless. "What does she think she's doing?"

"Not everyone is brutish enough to use a gun," Mima said. She hung motionlessly in the air, as though she had been suspended in amber. Sakuya rolled her eyes and resumed firing. Like most of Team Youmu, the maid preferred using her own powers and weapons instead of firearms. However, knives were of little use against monsters who couldn't bleed.

"This is like trying to stop an avalanche with a squirt gun," Lily said, holstering her pistol and taking up Youmu's M-4. The trouble contractor and her partner, Kay, had been the first Hunters to arrive at the monastery, searching for a missing UNESCO agent. However, the walking dead met them instead. In the ensuing panic, Lily had lost track of Kay, only to find Reimu's Hunters instead. After Nitori had found Kay hiding with another survivor, Lily had volunteered to lead Youmu's team to the crypt where the missing agent was last seen. Her contract depended on it. However, the myriad undead had other ideas.

"It's not like I can just snap my fingers," Mima said, watching as the undead converged on Youmu. The ghost's eyes widened. "So, that's how... Then again..." She snapped her fingers, and the myriads of animated bodies collapsed like marionettes with cut strings. Another snap, and walls of superheated flame cut through the graveyard, reducing the motionless corpses to ash. "Amateur," the magician said, cackling.

Sanae huddled behind the stone, seeking what little refuge from the waves of heat radiating through the graveyard. Sipping from her canteen, she gave silent thanks to her goddesses for the shelter.

"Enough," Youmu yelled over the crackling flames. The half-ghost ran from the flames, taking care that the tip of her iron _ararebo_ rod stayed out of the dirt.

Sighing, Mima waved her hand and the flames died. Not even glowing embers remained. "You never let me have my fun." She pointed towards Sanae and Lily. The priestess spat out a mouthful of water as the ghost's hand took on a sickly green aura. "How about you make it up to me? Give me the new girl."

Youmu held her hand up as she sat down behind the shared tombstone. As Sakuya fussed over the team leader, the half-ghost said, "I would have thought that you had your fun already."

Sanae peeked out from the edge of the stone at the blackened and scorched earth and gulped.

Mima lowered her hand and the aura faded. With a shrug, she said, "I prefer a more hand's-on approach."

"What just happened?" Lily said, motioning towards the ash and soot on the other side of her hiding place.

"I just cancelled out whatever animating magic that hack used to make those zombies. Oh, and now that corpse-botherer knows I'm here. And I guess I saved your worthless skin," Mima said, stifling a yawn. "Well, I guess it can't be all wine and roses. I'm going to take a nap. If you need me, just admit that you're screwed."

"Old One witch," Lily said, waving her carbine's muzzle at the ghost. The trouble contractor had a near pathological obsession with the extradimensional horrors often called upon by necromancers to raise the dead. Considering that she was one of the few survivors at the monastery, no one blamed her.

"What do you think you're going to do with that?" Mima said. Mirth lit up the ghost's eyes as her body grew increasingly translucent.

Sanae rolled forward to knock the weapon away, but Sakuya instantly materialized between the trouble contractor and the ghost. The elegant maid held all of Lily's weapons. The trouble contractor stared at her empty hands for a moment, before searching her suit's pockets.

As a cloud floated nearby, Youmu rolled her eyes. "Mima isn't working for the Old Ones."

"I'm more of a free agent," the sorceress said. She smiled, a sight that brought Sanae no comfort. "Kinda like a mercenary. You know all about that, don't you?"

A single metal card appeared in Lily's hand. "I don't know what you are talking about." The toneless reply came automatically.

"Let's see, your name is actually Yuri. Really, 'Lily?' How unimaginative," Sakuya said, reading from an ID that suddenly appeared in her hand. The maid squinted and then looked up at the willowy government agent. "What's the 'Dirty-'"

"We call ourselves the 'Lovely Angels,'" Yuri said, shaking her head. She held out her hand. "Can I have that back?"

Sanae blinked at the familiar name. Suwako loved that old television show. "So are you-"

"-part of science fiction's most infamous wrecking crew? Hardly," Yuri said, casting a glare at the priestess. "And I'm tired of people asking that question. Look, it was just a bad joke by some otaku who programmed the human resources computer. It's not like buildings collapse spontaneously whenever we're around."

Sanae groaned, giving thanks to Kanako that Suwako wasn't around. The old frog goddess would probably adopt the two trouble contractors just for nostalgia's sake.

"I should hope not," Sakuya said, handing over the ID and the trouble contractor's weapons.

"Seriously, one building falls over and everyone gets nervous."

* * *

><p>It wasn't the darkness that wore at Sanae, nor even the moldering smell of old bones, nor even the stone walls of the crypt pressing in on her, freshly stained with drying blood.<p>

"What an embarrassment to the name of Evil," Mima groused as she floated through the tunnel. Light glowed from the wand she somehow carried in her immaterial hand.

"Shut up," Sakuya breathed, stepping gingerly through the corridor. She walked a few paces ahead of the other Hunters, aiming both a 1911 pistol and a flashlight into the darkness.

"I mean, Evil's supposed to have its act together. Have a plan and kill everyone you meet." The ghost's complaints echoed along the halls. "Not mindless destruction like some petty bureaucrat."

Yuri's face froze. She turned to face the cantankerous spirit, but Sanae set a hand on the trouble contractor's shoulder.

"You're giving her what she wants," the priestess whispered.

"Can't you stop her?" Yuri asked, eyeing the sorceress as the ghost continued to rant through the hall.

Sanae shook her head. "Not me, you don't want to see her when she gets surly." Legend had it that the Misty Lake back home in Gensokyo was a crater created during one of the ghost's temper tantrums. "Ask Youmu, although I don't know how she puts up with her."

"Now, now, girls. No secrets," Mima said, draping her arms over Yuri and Sanae's shoulders. Sanae bit back a shriek as the ghost's frigid touch settled on her skin. Pain knifed into the priestess's flesh as Mima dug in her nails.

Metal slid against metal. The chill vanished as Mima let go of Sanae and Yuri, hissing a vile oath. Sanae worked her shoulder, wincing with each movement. How had the ghost's nails pierced through the Hunter's body armor without scratching it? Next to her, Yuri pulled open her suit, looking for marks on her skin.

The villainous spectre floated towards Youmu. The ghostly swordswoman had bared scant decimeters of her Night Watch sword's blade. Sanae had seen that same sword banish spirits on earlier jobs. Reimu always hated ghost hunts; it was impossible to collect PUFF bounties without a body. Yet she had to admit that Youmu's swords made her uniquely suited for that job, if the half-ghost could get over her fear of spirits. "You have to turn me loose sometime," Mima said.

Youmu's hand left Night Watch's hilt. The sword slid back into its scabbard. "Perhaps. But until that time-"

Power surged through the confined burrow, foul and menacing. Sanae slapped a glowing charm against the stone wall, only watch as the paper crumbled away. Her breath caught in her throat; once again, the priestess's power had failed since fighting the lamia. Another wave of unearthly corruption pulsed through the crypt, barreling into the Hunters. Sanae stumbled forward, clutching her stomach.

"I'm glad Udonge isn't here," Youmu said, shrouded in the misty cloud of her ghost self. She eyed the shrouding dark before her. "She couldn't handle that."

"We've not doing much better," Sakuya said. The maid held Yuri by the shoulders as the trouble contractor dry-heaved against the wall.

"What an amateur," Mima said, shaking a fist at where the foulness came from. "Throwing around raw power just because you can? That's not evil, it's childish."

Sanae managed to choke down the lump in her throat. "I just wish it'd stop."

"Really, even Marisa knows that you never just throw power around without a plan-," Mima began. Ethereal chains snapped out from the dark recesses of the crypt, coiling tightly around the villainous spectre. "-like that," Mima said, paling.

As if pulled by an unseen hand, the chains jerked her into the shrouding dark. A heartbeat passed. The Monster Hunters stood still, wide-eyed, staring at the empty black.

"Help?" Mima yelled. Her call echoed as the chains pulled her through the tunnel. Youmu's team dashed through the crypt, chasing the faint trail from Mima's wand. Light danced along Sakuya's Lunar Dial, and Mima was suddenly in Sanae's reach. But the spirit slipped through the priestess's flesh and blood hands. Sanae winced, shaking her numbed hands as she ran. The priestess reached again, channeling Kanako's divine spirit. But nothing pure could cut through the miasma of corruption in the air. Sanae bit her lip; ever since that lamia spoke those strange words, the wind priestess's powers had ebbed away.

Sakuya blinked behind Mima, and the corridor, like the moment itself, stretched. Youmu lunged forward, thrusting her blade towards the chains. The tip of the ghost-cutting blade passed through, severing the bonds.

"Keep that away from me," Mima hissed, shrugging out of the tangled metal. Another chain flew out of the darkness, only to be met by Youmu's Night Watch. The spectre paled as more ghostly binding metal flew at her. "There's only one reason that corpse-robber would be after me," Mima said, huddling behind Youmu. Occasionally, the magical ghost would hurl torrents of fire past the swordswoman. "Binding me to flesh would make one hell of an undead, strong enough to challenge a master vampire. I'd become mortal, and after my body were destroyed, I would face judgment."

"You just don't want to listen to Eiki Shiki lecture you on your sins," Sanae said, staying out of Youmu's way. "After all, that'd only take a year for the abridged version."

"Maybe I deserve punishment," Mima said, rolling her eyes. Another gout of flame singed the crypt. "I did once use a spell created by Sanae Kochiya."

"Enough fire, some of us still have to breathe," Youmu commanded, deflecting a ghostly chain at the stone wall. A mesh of spiritual energy flew through the hall, only to be shredded by the touch of her sword. Another followed, mere seconds later, and another. The swordswoman shook her head. "Return straight home, without delay. No mischief."

"And how am I to get back without getting captured like some idiot priestess?" Sanae bit back a caustic reply.

Youmu closed her eyes, still cutting the spectral traps hurled towards Mima. The constant vapor trail around the swordswoman thickened, shimmering until a translucent twin followed behind Youmu. "You can leave now." Her words grew clipped and hollow as her ghost half became opaque. Mima faded away, muttering under her breath.

The onslaught stopped. The Hunters waited, eyeing the end of the tunnel. After a few minutes without spectral bonds or undead bodies hurtling towards them, they crept towards the end of the crypt.

* * *

><p>Sanae stepped into a spacious room, shoulder to shoulder with Sakuya. Both girls stared down the sights of their firearms. The priestess felt a quiet pang; having to trust in steel and lead when she would normally have trusted in faith ate at her. However, in the present circumstances, it was better to stick with what presently worked.<p>

Following the wall as she moved, Sanae gave silent thanks to the mint oil on her upper lip. The room resembled a deranged mix of cave and butcher shop. Piles of bones and giant cuts of what she hoped was just rotting meat sat on slabs of stone and wood. Sanae half expected to see a hunchback scurrying around and saying, "Yeth, marthter." Oddly enough, the abattoir had yet to become a den of flies. Not a single one of Wriggle's distant kin crawled on or flew by the feast of dead flesh.

Behind her, Youmu and Yuri slipped into the room. "How could the priests have missed this?" Yuri said. A kerchief over her mouth and nose muffled the government agent's words.

"It wasn't easy, but as they say, location is everything," a honeyed, melodious voice projected from the far side of the room. By a covered slab, a figure stood, like a shadow growing as the evening sun sets. "I couldn't pass up all this raw material for my art. And if anyone found out, well, they gave me more to play with."

An electric light revealed the figure. Yuri snapped off two shots, but the bullets ricocheted off an invisible barrier.

"That was unkind," the figure said as the shadow parted.

"A kappa?" Sanae said. True enough, one of the seemingly harmless river monsters stood before her; identical to her goddess's followers except for the black and red dress. And the taste for reanimating dead flesh. "What are they doing out of Gensokyo?"

"Our lost sisters still live?" the petite monster said, smoothing her bloodied rubber apron. "I look forward to carving that information from your brains."

"Better monsters than you have tried," Youmu said, baring her White Tower's Ward short sword. The swordswoman crouched, both her blades held at the ready. As Sanae backed into the nearest shadow, she wished that Youmu hadn't sounded like a crazy action hero.

"And you must be that glorious spectre I sensed earlier. I'm impressed that you could escape my grasp." The kappa necromancer's eyes sparkled for a moment before fading. "Pity that you already are bound to flesh."

"You are bound by law to stand down-" Yuri began, training her carbine at the necromancer.

A smile crossed the kappa's face. "I think not. Please, come closer. You wouldn't want to anger my pets."

Something growled behind Sanae, breathing chills down her back. She turned her head just enough to see red eyes and black teeth, telltale signs of a wight. Unlike other undead, wights looked mostly human and could walk around in daylight However, its touch brought paralysis, quickly followed by death from the monster's claws. The priestess slipped a spell card and a paper charm into her hand. Like the other Hunters, she slowly made her way towards the sheer-covered slab, herded by the growls of wights.

The kappa stripped away the sheet, revealing a muscular male corpse stripped to the waist. Scars and stitched cuts crossed his torso, running down below the belt line of his well-tailored slacks. The corpse's shoulder twitched at the necromancer's touch, sending the leathery tentacle that replaced his right arm flopping like a fish on land.

"Squid lover," Yuri hissed, backing away from the stone table.

"Honey, don't knock it until you've tried it," the kappa said with a wink and a laugh. Sanae winced at the thought and crossed her legs.

"Have you?" Sakuya asked, her face an expressionless mask.

The necromancer paled. "Of course not. Why does everyone ask that?"

"No reason," the Hunters said in unison. The wights in the shadows hissed.

Yuri compared the features of the corpse on the table to a small photo in her free hand. "Poor Agent Anderson."

The kappa regained her composure. "Now, I'd like to give you an invitation," she said, waving towards a series of empty tables. "Just lay down for a moment and close your eyes. It'll all be over in a second."

"What makes you think that we'd obey you?" Sanae said. She gathered her faith. A miracle, that's what she'd need to live. Her luck had to turn some time.

"Look at what I made with the heart of a Hunter," the necromancer proclaimed. "Imagine what I could do with the hearts of Hunters who are monsters as well. Why do you think your company has been at the center of my plans?"

Sakuya teleported behind the necromancer. Burying the tip of her pistol between the kappa's shoulder blades, she said, "On the ground, now."

In the blink of an eye, nothing remained where the kappa had stood but smoke. Foulness surged through the abattoir. Sanae could no longer feel the wight's chill on her neck, but what was once Agent Anderson opened its eyes and sat up.

"Time to play, my dear," the kappa's voice rang out. "Bring me their hearts."

* * *

><p><strong>Nitori<strong>

The _sokushinbutsu,_ bony leather husks of once holy men, crashed against their glass prisons. I couldn't help but stand still, transfixed by the growing spider web cracks.

_Clickety-BOOM!_

A shotgun blast tends to get my attention quickly. "Behind us!" Marisa said. She pointed her abomination of a shotgun into the great hall's entryway.

Immediately, all eyes went to Reimu. The boss took a second to take in the mummies smashing their way into the hall, the sorry state of our makeshift defenses, and the patients Reisen tended to in the midst of it all. "Into the hallway," she said, pointing across the vast room. "Now!"

We leaped into action. Reimu and Reisen scooped up Alice. The puppeteer would have complained about the undignified manner, but she was still out cold. The Shinto priestess Chie supported Kei as the trouble contractor hobbled across the vast room. Kei kept her Glock leveled on the nearest _sokushinbutsu_ as she passed. Unless her bosses issued her silver ammunition, it wouldn't be of much use.

"Cirno, slow them down," Reimu shouted as she ran, carrying Alice by her shoulders.

The ice nymph flew into the air, flinging half-formed ice at the _sokushinbutsus'_ glass chambers. The mummies howled as the barrier between them and us thickened considerably. Each blow from the powerful monsters sent sprays of snow and ice into the room.

Meanwhile, Wriggle and I piled as many of the long tables on top of each other and carried them through the snowy room. Sometimes being a monster in a human world has its advantages. I might look like a petite little schoolgirl in my human form, but I still have the lifting power of my kappa nature. Anyone who has seen the massive overstuffed bags of goodies that I often carry home from the kappa bazaar with can attest to that. Also, even though Wriggle is a firefly, she has to be part flea given how easily the tinier youkai hefted her side of the stacked hardwood tables.

We caught up with Chie and Kei. "Sit," Wriggle commanded. The two women slid onto an overturned table top. Behind us, Marisa's shotgun barked. Kei turned around and added her Glock's fire to the percussion of the room.

Snow fell like a blizzard from the walls as the _sokushinbutsu_ slammed against Cirno's ice. The ice nymph kept adding to their prisons, but with two dozen to maintain, it would only be a matter of time before they broke through.

We made it to the hallway, tipping Chie and Kei into Reimu and Reisen's outstretched arms. Then Wriggle and I blocked the hallway with the tables before vaulting over the makeshift barricade. As barricades went, it'd be just as effective a barrier as tissue paper for monsters who could hammer through plexiglass. We'd have to rely on our weapons and ever shrinking ammunition. I rolled out of the way just before Marisa and Cirno landed practically on top of me. The witch turned and blind-fired her shotgun at the throng of zombies now shuffling into the great hall and through the snow.

Cirno glared at Reimu. "I told you that you should have let me bring Letty." Right now, I agreed with her; the ice nymph's beloved chain gun would be useful for once.

As the first of the _sokushinbutsu_ smashed through to their freedom, Reimu began shouting orders. "Cirno, see what you can do to make sure nothing can sneak up behind us. Marisa, you and I will take the first turn at the front. Wriggle and Kei, you're next. Try to stay warm, this is a bad time to hibernate..."

As Reisen searched for a nook to rest Alice inside, she threw open a door. "Nitori, what can you make with this?"

I came over and smiled. She had found a well stocked cleaning closet. "I can guarantee the results will be explosive." I started stripping the shelves, humming a happy little kappa tune.

"Perfect," Reimu said, with the briefest hint of a smile. Her Yin Yang orbs fanned out in front of her, forming a lethal barrier in front of the wood tables.

"What should I do?" Chie asked. The priestess stared at the shrinemaiden expectantly.

Reimu tapped her sidearm as she looked Chie over. Shrugging, she took her place at the front of the barricade. Calling out over her shoulder, she said, "Pray."

* * *

><p><strong>Sanae<strong>

What was once Agent Anderson swiveled its legs off the slab. As it stood on its pseudopods, it whipped its arm tentacle, cutting the air where Sakuya had stood a moment before. Instantly, the maid appeared behind the monster and pressed the muzzle of her firearm against its skull.

Ichor splattered like danmaku. Instead of staining the cave, the drops flowed together, creating writhing white tendrils the color of sun-bleached bone. With one bullet, Sakuya had turned the monster's skull into something akin to an anemone. Some of the stalk had eyes, others wrapped around the pistol and Sakuya's hand.

Sakuya screamed as she vanished, reappearing in a warding crouch in front of Youmu. Knives flashed in her good hand, while a blackened glove dangled limp from the other.

Sanae cringed as the kappa's cheerful laugh filled the chamber. "Show yourself," the priestess commanded.

"I think that your hands are full enough. I wonder, though, have you heard of the hydra?"

High school mythology classes flooded through Sanae's mind, telling of a monster that continuously regrew heads when one was chopped off. "We need fire," she shouted, running to where the other Hunters had grouped up.

Yuri reflexively emptied her pistol into the hydra-agent's back. Tendrils flowed from the wounds, and the abomination turned around. The monstrous agent leaped over the stone slab, reaching for the girls.

The Hunters scattered. Sanae ducked under the tentacle, flinging a charm at the creature. The paper sizzled against the scarred flesh until bone-white tendrils punched through and consumed the charm. Youmu's Night Watch flicked out, slicing deep into the tentacle, splitting it into two wriggling appendages.

"This isn't working," Youmu said, tugging her blade free from the mass of white at the base of the now twin-tentacles. One slipped through the image of her ghost, and the swordswoman fell, paralyzed. Sakuya blinked, catching the team leader with her one good hand. A second blink, and the maid draped Youmu over her shoulder.

"Get moving," Sanae shouted, tossing a spell card at the monster's feet. It vanished in a flare of light and a torrent of danmaku, shrouding the dead agent from view. As it bellowed, she ran past, stopping long enough to scoop up Youmu's fallen Night Watch sword.

"No fair running now," the necromancer's voice called out, bemused.

Red-eyed wights and skeletal ghouls rose from stone and shadow. Sanae didn't bother shooting as she ran; there were too many grasping hands to dodge for her to spare the time. She feared the icy touch that would trap her within her own body, motionless, waiting for the slicing claws and ripping teeth...

A hand clamped on her shoulder. Sanae spun around, wild-eyed, raising her pistol. Sakuya shook her head as she caught the barrel. The maid vanished as blackened claws raked at her. The Night Watch sword took the wight's head as Sakuya reappeared. Sanae blinked, staring at her now empty hand. Sakuya took hold it.

"Hold-" Sakuya began as everything turned blue. The abattoir vanished, replaced by the crypt's tunnel. Sanae stumbled forward, catching herself against the rough hewn stone wall. "-on."

"About time," Yuri said, kneeling next to Youmu's body. The ghost girl sat propped against the wall. Her eyes fluttered as the government contractor tilted her head. " Paralysis. That... thing had to be part wight. She's almost out of it, thought."

Sanae looked down the tunnel, towards the necromancer's chamber. Sets of twin red pin pricks filled the darkness. "Not fast enough."

Sakuya held out her hand. The Lunar Dial glowed, and the tunnel stretched, pushing the wights further and further away.

"Neat trick. How does it work?" Yuri said. She shook Youmu's shoulders. "Come on, wake up."

"Nitori might know," Sanae said, sticking spell cards to the wall. Turning towards Sakuya, she tapped the furthest with her index finger. "Can you send these to them?"

The maid nodded as she wiped her face with a white cloth. Sanae lifted her finger off of the now glowing card. Instantly, it vanished, replaced by the echoed shrieks of the undead.

Youmu woke with a gasp and a start. Her hands flew to her sword belt, grasping. As her hands settled on the hilts of her swords, she breathed a short sigh. "Thank you," Youmu said, smiling at Sakuya.

A flash of faint rose crossed the maid's cheeks. She turned away. "We should get moving. I won't be able to keep them at bay forever."

* * *

><p><strong>The being once known as Agent Anderson<strong>

It looked around the slaughterhouse, its vision fractured like shattered glass. Looping its tentacle around a nearby body, it raised the moving corpse into the air. Ichor oozed from the paralyzed wight, dripping onto the monster's tendrils. Slowly, with each new drop, the creature's shattered eyesight twisted from an insect's multi-facetted vision to something closer to human. As it wringed the last of the wight dry, its anenome visage writhed until it once more resembled the dead agent from which it had been crafted.

Flinging the husk away, what was once Agent Ian Anderson of MI-13 sniffed the air. Regrowth left it famished beyond the pervasive hunger that drove all undead. The faintest whiff of sweet copper cut through the stale dust.

Fresh blood. Life still living.

Far more potent than a wight's dead ichor, human blood had the same effect on monsters that drugs had on an addict. Drawn by need, the monster bounded through the necromancer's playground of bodies and blades, bouncing off the walls of the crypt's tunnel. Wights and ghouls scurried out of the creature's way, lest their bones be ground beneath its feet.

The fragrance grew stronger, intoxicating, alluring. Frenzied, it slammed itself against stone, bellowing. But the life it desperately sought was no longer there. Only a bloody palm print remained.

A draft from the tunnel's opening wafted copper anew. Once again, the former agent gave chase, its need to rend and tear driving it, even into the accursed daylight. If the favor of the Old Ones shone on it, the monster would drag its prey screaming into the darkness.

The creature stumble into the burning light. Its eyes blinked away the fire just long enough to see a studded metal rod swinging towards its face.

* * *

><p><strong>Sanae<strong>

Sanae swung Youmu's _araebo_ rod like a slugger hitting for the fences. The sole softball player among the Hunters, she knew her old coach would be proud of the textbook swing. And likely appalled, given the use for it. But blades only made the monstrous agent stronger, and no one wanted to see just what the little white tendrils could do.

She grimaced as the rod spun the monster about. The creature had less give than a lamppost. That didn't stop the priestess from giving the unbalanced monster a few more good whacks. The former Hunter fell to its knees.

A night sparrow's birdsong trilled through the air. Sanae stopped in mid-swing, pivoted smoothly, and ran. High level undead like wights and whatever that kappa freak had crafted often moved swifter that the living; she'd need the head start to stay away from the tentacles' grasp. Dropping cards behind her, she zigzagged through the graveyard, danmaku clusters exploding at her feet.

Strong arms caught Sanae around her waist. In the blink of an eye, she found herself next to Youmu and Yuri, huddled behind a tall stone monument Sakuya release the priestess and settled next to her team leader. Seeing faces frozen in determination, she asked, "What's wrong?"

Yuri nodded towards the crypt as she tested her magazines for easy accessibility. Lined up like troops waiting for review, rotting zombies, bare-boned ghouls, and red-eyed, almost human wights stood in ranks. The tentacled monstrosity stood up and lurched to its place in the line, just to the right of a short figure in a black and red dress.

"Come now, did you think that I'd let you leave that easily?" the kappa shouted through cupped hands. "Remember, 'only cheaters prosper.' Not that you'll have long to remember that."

"I never thought I'd meet anyone with worse luck than Kei and I," Yuri muttered. The agent laid down in the prone, peeking the muzzle of her borrowed carbine around the corner of the monument.

"I'm not worried; I have the strength of ten because my heart is pure," Youmu said, easing into a defensive crouch. Her two swords flickered in the sunlight. Behind her, Sakuya talked into a headset microphone, warily eying the undead line.

"Now we're only outnumbered by a hundred to one instead of a thousand," Yuri said, adjusting the brightness of her reflex sight. "I feel safer already."

"Don't get too comfortable," Sakuya said, covering the microphone. "Reimu's expecting us."

The kappa's hand flew straight up and snapped forward. As the first ranks of undead shambled, lurched, and bounded towards the Hunters, Sanae said, "Does she know we're bringing company?"

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes<strong>

Thanks to Captain Vulcan and Mephiles666 for looking over the rough drafts.

I'm looking for some new monsters to go against. And, yes, I plan to do vampires. Feel free to make suggestions.


	7. Interlude: Choice

**Choice**

A Monster Hunter Gensokyo interlude by Achariyth

* * *

><p>The air was rank and foul, a harsh miasma punctuated by notes of…honey?<p>

Mokou Fujiwara's nose wrinkled as she blinked her eyes open. This wasn't the first time this week she had groaned herself awake in a strange place. She tried to rub her eyes, but her right arm would not move. Someone had lashed her arm against her body with thick bands of white cloth.

"What a way to start a morning," she rasped, worming her way upright.

"Afternoon, actually." A tall woman sipped from a black-lacquered mug as she rocked in a creaky chair. Her ornate uniform matched the elegance of the table next to her, the tea-stained cup in her hand, and the unpolished iron bars that walled Mokou away from the world.

"Did Kaguya put you up to this?" the immortal phoenix girl asked as she swept her good arm through her prison.

The woman scowled in mid-sip. "You did," Judge Eiki Shiki said. She poured a thick river of honey into her cup. Mokou coughed and pawed the air with her hand. Eiki pointed to the steaming cup of red tea resting just inside the iron barrier. "Tell me what you remember from last night."

Every fiber of Mokou's being protested as she shambled across the floor. She drained the cup, choking down the foul bitter swill until the first drops of honey touched her tongue. No one served bloodroot tea without something to cut the taste. Then again, no one usually served bloodroot tea, unless- "How bad was I hurt?"

Eiki finished her own cup and set it on the table. "Take care with your next words; they will determine what little mercy you may receive."

The acrid steam wafting from the bloodroot's dregs cleared Mokou's mind, but memories only returned in flashes. Kaguya. Fury. Fire. Blood. A young girl, death-white, limp in her father's arms. A mob, baying for blood. Agony. Her hand shot out and clung to cold metal as she sagged against the bars. "I lost control. I don't even remember what Kaguya said that set me off. I just hope they at least used my blood to save the girl before they ripped me apart."

Eiki shook her head. "By the time Eirin got there, there was nothing left of you but scraps. She used Kaguya's blood instead to save Kosuzu."

Mokou's breath rushed out of her. "I should check-"

Judge Shiki leapt to her feet. In a booming voice, she pronounced, "Mokou of the Clan Fujiwara, you are forbidden under pain of eternal imprisonment to be within five hundred meters of Kosuzu Motoori."

The blood rushed out of her face as the immortal phoenix slid to the floor. "You're banishing me from Gensokyo?"

"I should throw you into a pit and let you cool your head for a millennium or three," Eiki snapped. "You've hurt one little girl; I'm not sending you out where you can hurt more when you lose your temper again."

Mokou bowed her head and mumbled a prayer, although she wondered if any of the eight million gods would bother to listen.

Eiki studied Mokou in silence, and then pulled out a round mirror from her skirts. Pointing the polished brass at the immortal, she watched and waited. Lines etched deep into the judge's face and her hair greyed as the mirror played the long tale of Mokou's misdeeds. Finally, she set the mirror down on the table and whispered, "You never hurt anyone else in your feuds before. I've even seen a rabbit stop you in your tracks."

Mokou looked skyward, her cheeks glowing. "I had hoped no one saw that."

"Maybe all you need is some discipline." The judge paused for a moment, her eyes focused on a point far away. "Long ago, I passed judgment on the shade of an American soldier. Real troublemaker, too. The mob caught cheating at dice. Apparently, the only reason he even made it to Japan without someone shooting him first was that a judge back home gave him a choice." Years fell from Eiki as she spoke. "An option besides jail. You know, Reimu Hakurei's Professional Monster Hunters are looking for new blood." She made a moue of disgust. "And likely a new name as well."

"I don't get it," Mokou said.

"What was that delightful turn of phrase he used?" The judge's eyes bored into Mokou's. "'Go to war or go to jail.' Make your choice."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's notes:<strong>

After a long delay, Nitori, Sanae, and Reimu will be back on the 23rd of May, the two-year anniversary of the Monster Hunter Gensokyo, to finish out the Portent story. After that, well, there's rumors of ice beasts, black riders, and a vampire vs. vampire title fight. No sparkles, I promise. Well, unless something's on fire, that is.

Monster Hunter Gensokyo is inspired by Larry Correia's Monster Hunter International series. I will pull this work if contacted by a representative of ZUN, Mr. Correia, or Baen Books.


	8. Frenzy

**Monster Hunter Gensokyo: Frenzy**

A Touhou fanfic inspired by Larry Correia's_ Monster Hunter International_ series.

Written by Achariyth

Frenzy _takes place four months after _Portent _and two months after a planned work tentatively called _Infiltrator_. Events for both stories are referenced._

* * *

><p>"I'm sorry, I was just talking about an RPG my friends and I were playing last week. Want to hear about my level five sorceress?" Noire said. The dark-haired kappa with a bob cut sat at a classroom desk alongside a mix of Newbies and veteran Hunters. I'd known her since long before Marisa had swept up a bunch of us in her get rich quick gold mining scheme back before Reimu started her lucrative monster hunting company.<p>

I bit my lip as Sanae Kochiya's eyes widened. "No, no, no!" the priestess said, shaking. "You're trying to scare people off. Say that, and every gamer in a city block will be after your number. Last time Nitori did something like that, she had her own fan club."

What can I say? There's something about a cute engineer with a gun that guys find irresistible. From Noire's feigned innocence, I know she's aware of that as well.

"You don't want to get one the way I did," I said, hopping off of the desk. "Saltwater dehydration hurts." A while back, I had chased a gremlin through a sunken ocean wreck. To catch it, I'd transformed into my river kappa form. I caught the little monster right as the sea pulled the fresh water from my body.

"The love letters and free food made up for it," Sanae said, hiding her smile behind her hand. My hospital room had been flooded in cards and gifts from lonely technicians on the island.

I'm Nitori Kawashiro, and right now I'd rather be back in my lab instead of helping Sanae teach Newbies. But after a recent contract went sour, to the tune of hundreds of mummies, wraiths, wights, ghouls, zombies, and an abomination in a cherry tree, Reimu used some of the massive bonus from that mission to hire more Hunters. More shooters meant more guns, more ammo, and more everything needed to make sure we don't get caught in another last stand. While I'd rather play with my toys instead of creating cover stories more believable than "swamp gas off of Venus," the Newbies needed to know that skill. Most of us have that less-than-human look; it's best to sound as boring as possible so that people don't stop and ask more awkward questions. Like "Why are you carrying more guns than a police station?" and "Why are you covered in blood and gore?"

"Try again," Sanae said, staring down Noire.

While my kappa sister stammered her way through the rehearsed lies, a doll hovered its way inside the room and handed an envelope to Sanae. Opening the letter, the priestess said, "Class is over. Everyone, back to the office."

* * *

><p>"I've got two jobs," Alice Margatroid said from behind her desk. It was good to see her up and around, especially after a priestess had purified her during a zombie outbreak. (It's a long story that I'm certain I've told before.) The doll master insisted that she was back to normal, but she hadn't hidden her cane half as well as she thought she had. Two dolls, each the twin of our blonde youkai secretary, passed reports around the room.<p>

For once, the room wasn't filled with that dead werewolf smell that lingered since Flandre Scarlet liquefied some very bad doggies. Instead, it reeked of wet dog and oni. Kasen had been tutoring Momiji and Suika in the secrets of mountain hermits. Apparently, the process involved a daily dose of a marathon's worth of running. I breathed through my mouth as more Hunters squeezed their way into the small office.

We had three teams now, and our support section, formerly Alice and I, was now a team in its own right, thanks to Noire and a few others. Even with the harsh training and the horrors of the gut crawl winnowing away most of our recruits (try crawling through a dark tunnel after Flandre's exploded a McDonald's worth of cows inside), Reimu had hired Kasen, Momiji, Suika, and Mokou. Although in Mokou's special case, hiring isn't quite the word I'd use. Reimu even signed on Patchouli as our archivist even though the fussy librarian hadn't done the gut crawl. (She had flushed out the course with a spell card before she crawled through the tunnel. I wish I had thought of that!) All the new faces squeezing in among the veterans made Alice's office cramped. I tried to squirm around Momiji, but got a nose full of wet wolf tengu tail fur for my trouble.

I sneezed as Alice's Hourai doll slipped a stack of papers into my hand. I don't know how she managed to find that tissue as fast as she did, but I was grateful when the Hourai doll handed it to me as well. Momiji turned around and glanced at the paperwork in my hand. Underneath the tissue, my nose wrinkled.

"First up, there are reports of a aswang in Yokohama," Alice said, reading from the clipboard on her desk. "Only one's reported, for once." She looked around for volunteers.

No thanks. I've had my fill of undead. A graveyard's fill at that. At least the assignment would be a straightforward fight once they tracked down the werewolf-vampire thing. Note I said straightforward, not easy. It'd be perfect for Kasen and her Newbies. I hope they don't forget to bring salt.

"I hope the next one is more interesting," Wriggle Nightbug whispered next to me. Cute as, well, a bug, the boyish firefly could fire two pistols at the same time and actually hit what she aimed at. Apparently, compound eyes made Two Gun Mojo possible.

"Not too interesting, though," I whispered back while Alice ran through the details. Interesting had a way of finding me like the blood that invariably soaked my armor each mission. After chasing a gremlin through an underwater wreck, trying to escape after a werewolf took me hostage, fighting a wight alone in close quarters, and keeping Mokou from tripping a Halon fire suppression system and gassing an entire building, I was ready for some old-fashioned routine boredom. Sure, I could quit working for whatever Reimu's calling the Company this week, but I couldn't give up all the cool toys we got to play with.

"Kasen, take your team and Wriggle on this one," Reimu said. Even though the mission was a milk run, she wanted experience handy. A Level head didn't hurt either, which ruled out Marisa and Cirno.

"So much for interesting," Wriggle said. Her antennae twitched in anticipation as she tapped the Perpetual Unearthly Forces Fund (PUFF) bounty for the aswang. Even the short share of 7,500,000 yen could make for a memorable night on the town.

"The second job-" Alice began.

I turned the page over to the next assignment. Someone had snapped a photograph of an open-mouthed shark wreathed in tentacles around its face. From the size of the teeth in the picture, this was likely the photographer's last. I recognized this one instantly as the monster that filled the nightmares of the river folk. A lusca, or sharktopus as the current movies call it.

"I'll do this one," I said. I'd do it for free even, but the wise Monster Hunter doesn't make such claims in front of Reimu. She'd take me up on that offer in a heartbeat.

"I'll go, too," Noire shouted. She bobbed up from behind Kasen and Sakuya.

Our people have a long smoldering feud with these sea monsters. Normally, lusca remain in the ocean while we kappa keep to our rivers. But sometimes the sharktopus would swim and crawl its way up a river, devastating kappa villages along the way. They preferred our young, but would feed on any kappa nearby. Now, if a shark fin is sighted in a river, we descend on it like, well, a wrathful Reimu on a mischievous youkai. I've even participated on lusca hunts. It's become a social event, in an odd way. After the chaos between "what's that smell?" and "thank Kanako that's over," we even have a cookout. Sharktopus is divine with a spray of orange and a little pepper. Raw with a pinch of rice is good, too.

"That was quick," Youmu said from the front of the room.

"It's a kappa thing," Noire said.

"Where is it?" I asked, praying that the monstrous fish hadn't been found near any of the kappa settlements.

"Matamoros island," Alice said, snapping her fingers. A Shanghai doll rode the projector screen down as it unfurled. A map of a familiar island chain filled the screen. "Near Tsukishima."

Bright Xs appeared along a U-shaped island and its nearby neighbors. On the Pacific side, of course. Large sharks and lusca avoided the shallow lagoon whenever possible. Not that I would be going for a swim. I learned my lesson from the last time I was there.

"Book us a ride," I said. Already, I was making a list of things to bring from my lab. Explosives, fish finders, pneumatic harpoons, a little surprise I called the Dezombifier that I wish I had with me during that disaster at the Buddhist monastery...

Why's everyone inching away from me?

"Not so fast," Reimu said. I snapped out of a pleasant dream of explosions in my head. "I'm not letting you run off all alone with a Newbie."

My smile grew strained. Last time I went off by myself, Sakuya and Mokou had to sneak me out of a building infested with a hidebehind and Monster Control Bureau teams trying to collect a bounty on _me_.

Look, the necromancer that dumped a millennium's worth of old graves on us was a kappa. That one of my people had caused the mess at the monastery, well, I wanted to find this rogue alone in a dark alley. And I was searching a lot of alleys back when Mokou and Sakuya saved me. I still am, and I think Reimu knows it.

"Last time we sent a kappa to the tropics, we found out that they don't like salt water," Sanae said. She had been my partner on that Tsukishima trip and nursed me after my...accident.

"We'll wait for it to come on shore first," Noire said. "Only a fool chases lusca in open water."

"You've fought them before?" Reimu asked.

Noire nodded. "So has Nitori. As I said, it's a kappa thing."

"Fine," Reimu said. "Take Marisa with you."

"Alright!" the witch said. "Tropical vacation time!"

Instantly, the room filled with a chorus of "I want to go, too!" Reimu banged the flat of her hand against the table until the din died down.

"Noire and Nitori are going because they're our lusca experts," she said. "Marisa goes because someone might need to fish either of them out of the salt water. Everyone else not tasked to a mission stays. It's an expensive trip even without the bribes needed to get Nitori's surprises on the plane."

I knew the real reason why Reimu sent Marisa. She wasn't coming to help us, the witch was there to stop me if I went off the reservation again.

* * *

><p>"Make it stop," Marisa whispered. The witch held her hands over her ears and huddled in the center seat. Empty soda cans and trial-sized whiskey bottles covered the seat tray in front of her.<p>

It wasn't the long airplane flight that reduced this master incident resolver and Monster Hunter, one who had faced down gods, youkai, and even Reimu herself, to a quivering wreck. The airline pilots had kept the flight nice and smooth, more's the pity.

"Don't forget to calibrate..." Noire said from the window seat. She rattled off specifications and procedures from some obscure bit of electronics manual that I couldn't recognize. Fortunately for her, Maria clenched her eyes shut. I'm sure the witch would have wiped the devilish smile off of my assistant's face.

Well, maybe not just Noire's. My smile matched hers. Do you really think I'd pass up a chance for a little payback? Especially with an audience captive for hours at a time? Marisa's treated my workshop as her own private arsenal for as long as I've known her. But as I wracked my brain for a set of technical specifications I hadn't already used, the plane banked to the left. Specks of brown and green could be seen thousands of meters beyond Noire. "Cool!"

Noire and Marisa pressed their faces against the glass. "Can you see the island?" Marisa asked. I couldn't see anything past the thick mane of blonde hair.

As the plane landed, I swore that I'd get the window seat on the next flight. Fifteen minutes later, as we sat on the runway and sweltered in the heat, I just wanted a shower.

"Okuu doesn't keep the Hell of Blazing Fires this hot," Marisa said. She tugged on her collar and fanned herself with an in-flight magazine. "Was it this bad last time?"

"Sanae and I took a helicopter, not a flying oven, " I said. "And I was smart enough not to wear a mountain of clothing to the tropics. Don't you have a spell to deal with this?"

The door mercifully opened. Now, instead of just being hot inside the plane, it was swimming-through-soup humid as well. That actually made it more bearable for Noire and I. Marisa looked like someone had just fished her out of the sea.

We walked off the plane and into one of those bad American World War Two movies that Suwako likes. Palm trees, whitewash, and rust gave the island that faded paradise gone wrong feel. I half expected to hear air raid sirens and men in khakis running in formation.

Island security waved the new arrivals toward the three-story building that served as Matamoros's customs office, airport terminal, and control tower. But before we went inside, an attendant with a sign for "Miss Kirisame and associates" waved us over to a side gate.

* * *

><p>"There's only one rule you have to worry about on the island," Ms. Jones called over her shoulder as she drove our golf cart down the beach road. While it was nice to see a familiar face from my previous visit, I didn't want to imagine the amount of money Reimu must have thrown at her to get her away from Tsukishima for a week. Fixers aren't cheap.<p>

"Surely there's more than that," Noire said. She watched wide-eyed as dark blue waves crashed against brown rock. A bread truck weighted down with our gear and luggage plodded along behind us. I wondered how nervous the driver would be if he knew that he was carrying enough gear to invade the island for the third time in its history.

"Well, none that apply to you three. I'd suggest that you refrain from blowing up anything expensive, though. There's not much infrastructure on the atoll or jobs, so stray bullets will ruin lives."

"That's great and all," Marisa said, leaning out of the cart and into the breeze. She'd ditched the apron, but was still stuck in her layers of petticoats and black dresses. "What's this one rule?"

"Don't cross the air field," Ms. Jones said. She pointed to the runway. "Ever. It's for safety. We never know when we're going to get a flight and the residents get testy whenever they can't get food and mail because someone's getting scraped off the tarmac."

"Shouldn't be a problem," I said, holding my cap tight against my head. It felt like we were riding in a wind tunnel. "Most lusca wouldn't bother hoisting themselves this far inland."

"Normally, that is," Noire said, looking down at a welcome pamphlet flapping in her lap. "Apparently the atoll sold fishing rights this year to a nation known for sweeping the seas clear of life. If one's hungry enough, it just might."

"Just don't go talking about monstrous fish. The authorities have been blaming the attacks on riptides," Ms. Jones said. That sounded about right; lusca liked to drag their victims away to underground caverns before feeding. "They don't want anything scaring the tourists off."

"It's hard to hide a fish...thing that big," Noire said.

"They'll just blame it on the American nuclear tests in the 1940s." Ms. Jones turned past a baseball diamond. More whitewashed buildings sprang up around us.

"Now that's more like it," Marisa said and whistled. I smiled as Noire gasped. You never forgot your first sight of the lagoon. Where dark blue rollers crossed on the bare rock shelf on the Pacific side of the island, the lagoon's aqua waters stretched to the horizon like glass. There was even a small stretch of sandy beach, complete with fire pits. It curved around until it met the busy marina and an even busier grill. I didn't need to be a fortune teller to know where Marisa would drag us tonight.

"That's Rumrunners. Only real restaurant on the island, or at least the only when were you can get something besides catch of the day. " Ms. Jones turned again, following the beach away from the marina. Marisa sighed as the road took us into a tangled mess of palm trees, wide-leaved brush, and vines.

"Is that _kuzu_?" Noire asked, pointing to where a thick braid of vines choked out a palm tree.

"Kudzu is everywhere," Ms. Jones said. The thick leafy canopy shrouded the sun from sight. "They tried to get rid for 60 years. Now, they just try to keep it from spreading to other islands. Some of the locals even blame it for the lack of rats and cats on the island."

"That's interesting," Marisa said, wringing out her collar. "But where's the shower?"

* * *

><p>"Hurry up, Marisa, you're going to use up all the cold water!" I shouted, banging on the bathroom door. The door and the shower muffled her undoubtedly caustic response.<p>

She'd been in there for an hour, and I was starting to get twitchy. Mostly because I'd been trapped in this concrete igloo the island had given us to stay at out where the lagoon met the Pacific. It would have been spacious, even with three women, if we hadn't stacked piles of monster hunting gear in the center.

Yes, you read that right. Concrete igloo. No, it's not some crazy military building, just one designed to withstand the typhoons that regularly swing through the islands. They look goofy, so the island keeps these houses far from the tourist areas. Noire and I want to build one when we get back.

"Hey, Nitori, did you know that you can see where the Americans mined stone from the ocean during the war?" Noire said, reading from a pamphlet. I swear, that girl had read me every brochure on the island at least once while Marisa showered. "Wanna swim in the quarry?"

"No thanks." I sighed, unballing my fists. At least the hut was air conditioned, or I think I might have dunked Noire in the ocean just outside our door. "I got my fill last time." Along with my own private room at the local medical station. I planned on not going kappa form or swimming while we were here.

"Well, did you ever got to any of the other islands? The guide says Ralik is between here and Tsukishima," Noire said, pointing to a map on her pamphlet. I doubted that even Aya could have made anything out from a picture that small.

"Sanae did," I said, scowling as my mind drifted towards the tedium of a sterile white room. "As soon as the doctors cleared me to leave the station, we left for home." And not a moment too soon, as the local doctor had plans of getting enough data to publish a kappa appendix to _Gray's Anatomy_.

"And?"

"She said it was a typical Third World shantytown. Too many people, too few jobs, and more children than a legion of Keine clones could wrangle."

"Well, when this is done, I'm going to visit. This is my first trip away from Gensokyo and I want to see everything," Noire said. She started digging through a duffel bag. "I even brought a camera."

"Don't tell me that you're turning into a tengu."

The bathroom door flew open. Marisa walked out with a fluffy towel around her body and another wrapped around her hair. "I feel much better. So, what do they have to do around here?"

"You two go ahead," I said, thumbing open the latches on a black Pelican case. "I want to check on the gear."

"You're coming with us," Marisa said, staring me down. "Bad things happen when you wander off."

"It's an island! How much trouble do you think I can find?"

"You did a good enough job last time you were here."

"Fine," I said with a sigh. "I'll go."

"Shower's free," Marisa said, nodding to the open bathroom door.

"Dibs!"

I fumed as Noire strode into the bathroom and closed the door behind her.

* * *

><p>"This is a waste of good fish," I said, driving a wicked hook through a mackerel before tossing the fish out into the surf. After rinsing my hands in the ocean, I waded further down the water line, taking care to avoid the thick cables stretching out between the beach and the bait. My thick rubber waders slipped and slid on the slick rock under my feet.<p>

After sleeping off a night's worth of revelry and alcohol, we had set up shop on the Pacific side of the island on a stretch of sand between the runway's edge and the ruins of the old wartime pier. Not much of it remained except for a concrete pillar and a rectangular scar the size of a soccer field hewn into the ocean floor. The locals called it the Shark Pit, after the triangular fins that flourished out here where the Pacific waters churned into the lagoon. Sport fishermen would crawl down a rock pile covered in brush and kudzu just for the thrill of reeling in a shark.

Last week, however, one of them didn't return. The Shark Pit had held another monster that day.

"This is what the fishermen brought in last night," Marisa said from the shore. She scanned the ocean surface with a pair of binoculars. Our carbines and that abomination of a shotgun that Marisa loves so much rested on a plastic tote box by her feet. I shuddered to think of what the salt spray would do to them. "You don't think that's enough? Try to look tasty while you're out there then."

"You're the one who marinated herself in beer all night," I called back, flinging my last fish past the white wall of breaking waves.

"All done!" Noir hollered from the other end of the beach, waving her hands. While I slipped my way back to safety, she flew across the rock floor in her bare feet. Show off. I wobbled ashore and helped my assistant tie the cables to a charging circuit connected to a car battery. Noire had stolen the idea from commercial fishermen who used electrified harpoons to quickly and humanely kill large fish. I doubted that it would work. Not because of Noire's skills, but because I knew the universe was conspiring to drench me in blood yet again.

"And now comes the hard part. Waiting," Marisa said, opening a case half as long as the witch was tall. She assembled a black rifle that, when finished, would be as tall as she was.

"Does Reisen know you stole her elephant gun?" Noire asked. She twisted down the last lead to the battery and walked towards her stash. She'd opted for a spear gun, an M4 chambered for the heavier 7.63 round, and a brace of soda-can sized explosives that she lovingly called her depth charges. Unlike Marisa, Noire hid her arsenal behind a wall of rocks she had stacked on the beach just for that reason. A similar stack hid my more exotic collection of firearms and gadgets.

"I just told her that Nitorin needed to run some acceptance tests," Marisa said. She slid a magazine the size of a hardcover book into the sniper rifle.

"She believed that?" I said, drooling over the M107A1 on the beach. Reisen guarded her favorite toy jealously, as everyone in the Company wanted a turn behind the sights. If that was all it took to get the rabbit to part with it...

"Marisa laughed as she eased her way into the prone. "Not a chance. It did keep her busy long enough for Wriggle and Cirno to slip it out of the armory. I wouldn't make eye contact with Miss Cuddle Bunny any time soon. Not until Youmu can calm her down."

"You going to hide that?" Noire said, settling into a beach chair next to her stash. Lusca were clever and weary. Some had even learned to recognize firearms.

"Fine. It'll give me something to do."

* * *

><p>"That's a pretty one," I said, fishing a red pebble from a pile cupped in Noire's hands. Held up to the sun, the smooth stone blazed in the light.<p>

"I like this blue one better," Noire said. She tapped a long flat disk. Sunlight gleamed off of its translucent surface.

"What do you have here?" Marisa said as she walked over. She plucked a green one from Noire's collection. "Nice! Hey, Nitorin, didn't you say that gemstones looked like this before they're cut?"

I nodded as I glanced out to sea. Nothing, not even sea gulls playing with the bait.

"I found all this in just fifteen minutes," Noire said with a smile. She slid her collection into a vest pocket. "The beach is covered with them."

Marisa's eyes widened as she backed away. "I'll be right back. Call me if anything happens." She turned and flew down the beach.

"So, are you going to tell her that it's just beach glass?" I whispered.

"Let her find out on her own," Noire replied.

* * *

><p>A triangle cut across the surface of the water. I lowered my field glasses. Sure enough, it was still there.<p>

"Fin! There's a fin!" I called out, pointing at the sea. Marisa and Noire jumped out of their chairs. The witch settled behind Reisen's beast of a rifle, while Noire waited to throw the battery's switch. I just stood there, with my field glasses, watching for another sign of shark or worse.

An hour later, blinking away the glare from dry eyes, we resumed our vigil from the comfort of out beach chairs.

* * *

><p>"You've got to be kidding me," Marisa said.<p>

Noire stood at the water's edge holding a fishing rod three times again as tall as she was. "I'm hungry," she said and cast her line out to sea.

* * *

><p>"I spy with my little eye-" Marisa began.<p>

"Water," Noire and I chorused.

"Let me finish. I spy something that begins with 'E.'"

"Even more water."

* * *

><p>"You ever see a crab stand up tall like that? It looks like it's on stilts."<p>

"Stop playing with your food, Noire."

"Marisa, it's not even near me."

* * *

><p>The sea had over the course of the day ebbed away until we could see the bait fish on the top of the waves. Bare rock stretched for hundreds of meters where the sea once stood, except for the rock quarry's cut out, which looked like a large inviting swimming pool in the middle of the expanse.<p>

I'm not sure how long we waited by the water's shrinking edge. It might have been mid-afternoon, if you went by the lengthening shadows. It felt like late evening. I know I needed a nap. Even Marisa looked as droopy as the sun baked kudzu behind us. I pulled my cap over my eyes and leaned back in my chair.

Rubber crunched against gravel. I turned as a golf cart swung around, rolling to the edge of the rock pile's drop. Ms. Jones leaned out of the cart and cupped her hands. "Get in. There's been a large shark attack over on Ralik."

* * *

><p>Just reading about Ralik Island in a guidebook, like Noire did for the hour it took to get there, isn't enough to give you a feel for the place. Knowing that the island has more population per square kilometer than Tokyo is one thing. Seeing the maze of cinderblock building crowd out everything else on the island hits you in the gut in a way that words alone cannot. The guidebook doesn't say what it's like to watch an overturned sea turtle larger than most dinner tables gasp its life away in slow motion on the deck of a fishing boat while the owner takes bids for the meat. Nor does it tell you of the mother's terror for kids not even my own species as they scramble up the mast of a rusted out landing craft so they can dive into the water below, often missing the hulk by inches. Nor does it tell you how to keep Noire from buying from the fish market an industrial sized cooler crammed full of ice and a fish loosely resembling red snapper.<p>

Let's just say this part of the trip was a real eye-opener for me. Even after a shark(topus) attack, life went on over at the protected lagoon side. On the Pacific side, however, they hacked sharks to death. What remained after the fury got bound in nets, tied to buoys off-shore, and left to rot.

"Why are they doing that?" Marisa asked, watching the red cloud in the water spread and fade.

"Wait here." Ms. Jones walked over to a group of men with long knives While she spoke with them, a young child ran over and latched onto the water bottle in Noire's hand. She lifted the water bottle over head. Both kappa and child giggled as he dangled from the water bottle. Marisa pulled him down and send him away with a swat from her hand.

Thankfully, I had kept my pistol next to my heart and not where little hands could easily steal it.

Ms. Jones came back. "Apparently, rotting sharks repels other sharks. They said that they've seen the creatures that size before, but never after leaving the dead sharks out."

Noire and I turned and stared at each other with open mouths. "We've never tried that before," I said. "We never would have thought to. We're river people."

"And these are sea people," Marisa cut in. "Ask lots of questions while you can."

* * *

><p>I stumbled out of the bathroom, a thin wet robe clinging to my body. Even after an hour long nap on the boat ride back from Ralik, all I wanted to do was sleep. In the dark, please. It's after eight at night, can someone please turn off the sun?<p>

Falling into my bed, I wormed my way under the covers and cocooned myself in the sheets. My eyes closed. For a moment, my body felt as if it were buoyed about by waves and then sleep's embrace claimed me.

Then something heavy bounced on the mattress by my head. "Wake up!" Marisa said, shaking my shoulders. "We're going out."

I don't remember exactly what I mumbled back to her, but Noire swears that I threatened to turn Marisa into human andouillette sausage. I don't exactly believe her; no kappa alive remembers how to make that old recipe.

"Closer the door behind you." I rolled away from her, clenching my eyes shut.

"You're coming with. I don't speak fisherman. Someone has to translate for me."

"You speak liar well enough!" Noire choked back her laugher as Marisa thumped my arm. I groaned and opened my eyes for the first time, blinking away the glare. "Take Noire."

"I'm not going without my best friend," Noire said, giggling.

If looks could kill, I would have just depopulated the entire island. "Why are we doing this?"

"Information," Marisa said, shaking my shoulders before tugging the sheets off of me.

"We got some good tips on Ralik."

"And we can get some more from the fishermen at Rumrunner's."

"You just want free drinks."

"No one says that we can't enjoy ourselves while we're here at this tropical paradise." Marisa dropped a stack of clothes on my head. "We're leaving in half an hour. Wear something cute."

* * *

><p>"Please?" Marisa said. She looked up at the butcher with wide, hopeful eyes and her brightest smile. The market's meat and fish specialist shrugged off her attempt to wrap him around her finger. At least there was a counter between them, else Marisa would have likely tried a more direct approach.<p>

"It's too early for this," I groaned, sifting through the pharmacy aisle of Matamoros's largest market. Granted, if I'd been able to sleep in until noon instead of being pushed out of the igloo door at dawn, it would still be too early to deal with Marisa's cute little old me routine. Something in these bottles had to be able to kill this growing migraine. If not, I'd just steal some vegetables from the massive freezers that took up half the store. Perhaps the improvised ice packs would work.

"No," the gruff butcher rasped, slopping fish, guts, and blood into a twenty liter pail. The mess looked like good old fashioned kappa-style chili, just like Grandma Kawashiro used to make every weekend. I was glad for my sunglasses, though. He kept his counter spotless and gleaming.

"But we wanted to go shark fishing today," Noire said, adding a cute little tremor in her lip to that classic heart-wrenching pout. I hated listening to all this saccharine cutesy crap before breakfast. "and everyone says that you've got the best bait and chum on the island."

I rolled my eyes as the vice crushing my head squeezed harder. Why couldn't we just steal the bait that we wanted? Settling for a small bottle of generic ibuprofen, I shuffled off towards the register.

"That might be, but you're not getting any today." I hadn't seen a man so immune to a girl's charm since Rinnosuke. The butcher might look like he just escaped from college, but he had to have daughters of his own.

"Why not?" Marisa added her own sad puppy face to Noire's.

"This stuff doesn't grow on palm trees. It takes a day to make. You want it tomorrow, place your order now."

"Alright, we want an order," Marisa said, shifting to as professional a mode as a girl in a witch's hat and a tank top can manage. "Not just for tomorrow, but every day after. Until we say otherwise."

"Do you offer bulk discounts?" Noire asked. Unlike Marisa, she hadn't turned off the cute girl act.

"Sign this," the butcher said, sliding a clipboard into Marisa's hands.

The witch scrawled a pen across the page. "That takes care of tomorrow. what about today?" The butcher smiled for the first time since meeting Marisa and pointed into the store. Marisa followed his finger with her eyes. "You've got to be kidding!"

* * *

><p>"Fire!" I shouted, bringing my arm down in a chopping motion. Noire let go of the water balloon catapult's cup. A ball of dog food pellets shotgunned high into the air and splashed into a breaking waves. "Maybe a little higher."<p>

Noire nodded, scratching figures into the sand with a stick. Reaching over to the hastily improvised tripod for our chum launcher, she adjusted its height.

"I never thought in my wildest dreams that I'd be on a beach shooting dog food into the ocean," Marisa said. She scooped another load into the catapult, always keeping an eye on the water.

"'If it's stupid and it works, it ain't stupid,'" I said, repeating ancient kappa engineering wisdom. Noire pulled back on the catapult. Five seconds later, the air rained dog food again.

"The judge is still out on that. That butcher just wanted us out of his hair."

"You did lay it on pretty thick," Noire said, tinkering with the tripod. I seem to remember a certain kappa egging her on as she played along.

Marisa shrugged as she reloaded the launcher from a five kilogram bag. "It was worth a shot. So, how long do you think we'll have to do this to see results?"

Once more, Noire lobbed fish and rice pellets into the sea. "An hour, if we do this once every five minutes."

That took the fun is out of shooting dog food. Not that I expected there be much fun in making it rain nutrition over the ocean. Normally, for something as repetitive as this, I'd just make a machine handle this, but we needed to start the chum slick right away. In the time we've been waiting for the lusca to appear, I could have designed one, if I hadn't called away every five minutes to service the chow cannon fifty-two times in a row.

At least we can see several small fins slicing through the dark blue water. Noire, Marisa, and I had worried that the butcher was snickering at three idiot girls silly enough to toss dog food into the water. He still might, but my concerns were alleviated when Noire reeled in a pair of what she called blue snappers within the first hour. She's got them on ice for tonight's dinner.

I yawned and sat back down in my chair. Maybe I'd give Noire's rod and reel a try. It beats waiting-

Out in the ocean, the fins scattered quicker than fairies from a shrinemaiden duel. I sat up, and slung a spear gun and my M4 carbine behind my back. Pulling the slings tight, I glanced over at Noire. She'd armed herself in the same way and had managed to stash some of her depth charges in the pockets of her vest. I pointed at her and then at the sea. She nodded, and took off further down the beach at a brisk walk. Picking up a harpoon long enough to double as a walking stick, I set off in the opposite direction.

Marisa eased behind the scope of her monstrous rifle and waited. I knew there was also a stack of Master Spark cards near her.

After about fifty meters, I stopped and crouched, waiting as I watched the waves. My heartbeat pounded in my ears. I forced myself to take long, slow deep breaths. Breath in, two , three, four. Hold, two, three, four, and out, two, three, four. Something was out there. Predators don't flee like that unless some really nasty stopped by. It seemed like the entire world held its breath. If something doesn't happen soon, I think it might choke.

A triangular black sail broke through the dark blue waves in front of me. I'd hunted lusca before, so I knew my role. Bait. Sharktopus were still fish, kind of, and a well-aimed spear would pith it like any other fish. It's hard to make that precise a shot when a mass of teeth and suckers are bearing down on you, so I'd hold its attention while Noire took her shot. Hopefully, she'd turn the beast from a bad day into the beach into the island's biggest fish fry with her first shot.

The fin took a leisurely circle out beyond the surf. At one point, I thought I'd get to make the kill, then it looped back around towards me. Back to being the decoy. Looks like it's time to do my best Honey Ryder impression. (Hey, I have a soft spot for movies featuring Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.)

I stood up, harpoon in hand, and drove the butt of the spear into the ground. Meandering along the beach, I picked up the occasional piece of beach glass. I couldn't quite bring myself to sing "Under the Mango Tree," like Honey Ryder did in _Dr. No_, but I hummed it. Keeping that fin in the corner of my eye, I made my way closer to Marisa and Noire. Occasionally, a black octopus tentacle writhed in the air before slipping back under the water.

"Come on," I whispered, as the black fin stalked me. I even turned around once, just to see if it would follow. Apparently, kappa was on today's beachside menu, but the lusca was being cagey about it. Biting my lip, I staggered forward. My walking stick broke my fall.

Three tons of calamari, teeth, and hunger charged through the white spray wall, splashing into the shallow waters of the rock shelf. There was still enough depth, however, for it to swim instead of crawling on its tentacles.

I've been a part of my village's lusca hunts, but always as a chaser, never as the lure. Even then, the biggest I ever saw had been a blue shark before whatever process turns a fish into part squid, part shark had its way with it. That one was only 200 kilograms of saw teeth, twitchy muscles, and flailing tentacle. By flailing, I mean bone crushing, not erratic. The one torpedoing toward me was ten times worse.

Of _course_ I froze.

"Nitori!" Noire screamed, rushing towards me.

I turned and ran at an angle towards the rock pile, in that ancient kappa lusca hunting drill. When it beaches itself, Noire would hit it from the side. But no one had told Marisa our plan.

Sunlight glinted from her scope as she wrestled the heavy rifle towards the sharktopus. In the water, it pivoted sharply. One pulse from the tentacles ringing its middle sped it towards deeper waters. Small fountains chased after it as Marisa got the gun working.

I shouted, fumbling for the carbine on my back. More shots followed. The lusca vanished into the white rolling waters. A trickle of red trailed behind it, until a soda can splashed nearby. A second later, a giant plume of water shot skyward, obliterating any trace of the monster fish. For a minute, the beach had a brief and intense rain.

As the ringing in my ears faded, I lowered my M4 and said some really unladylike things that Patchouli won't let me repeat here. That thing's been hunted before. It recognizes guns. Best we can do today is hope that it doesn't grab a snack at one of the other islands on its way out. We're going to have to be trickier tomorrow.

* * *

><p>Wheels within wheels. It's not the usual kappa approach to invention, but I'm not going to braid and spool three separate strands of heavy fishing line by hand. Fifty meters makes for a lot of braiding. Nor was I going to pawn off the job to Noire. She had to figure out how to boost the spear gun's air pressure.<p>

Using a magically-enhanced laser pointer, I tacked a giant reel to a thick steel spike. Noire scowled as she watched my work. She had a better hand for wielding. Chemistry and circuit design's more my forte.

"Stop that," Noire said, lashing a pair of compressed air charges together. Most spear guns used a pump-action reservoir to launch a harpoon. We needed more power to throw a heavy spear through the sharktopus's thick, sandpapery hide. "You're just making more work for me."

"Fine," I said, walking away from the trio of spools and spikes. I had to step around the piles of components and tools littering the igloo. Creation is rarely a clean process. Opening a fishing tackle box, I rooted around inside and pulled out three envelope sleeves. "I still have to slip the capacitors in between the tines." Fortunately, I had a better hand at soldering.

None of this work would win any award. Chewing gum and baling wire approaches never do, but they get the job done. You won't see any actual chewing gum in my work, though.

The door trembled on its hinges as something heavy slammed into it. The doorknob turned, slipped and turned again. "Who ordered the tuna melt!" Marisa said, backing into the igloo. She carried a large brown bag filled with Styrofoam boxes. Noire held up her hand without looking up from the harpoon gun.

Marisa sniffed the air and scowled. The maze of tools sprawled out in front of her. "Ozone again?" She set the bag down by the door and dug out two small boxes. "I'm just going to leave this here for you two. If you need me, I'll be outside."

* * *

><p>"Do you thing we have enough?" Noire asked, setting the last of ten white buckets at the top of the rock pile. Like yesterday, the beach itself was placid, unlike the wall of churning waves and rock in the distance.<p>

"You do know that's for the lusca, not you, right?" I called back. Marisa and I had already slid down the rocks to the beach. "Pass it down."

A bucket hissed and then popped as Noire pried off a lid. Something in the brush rattled. Maybe the rats came back last night. She inhaled deeply. "Shame. I've got to get this recipe."

"Gross," Marisa said, gagging and heaving by the rocks. To a kappa, the buckets of fish, guts, oil, blood, and meat smelled like a feast. From the way Marisa's skin suddenly matched the kudzu, humans thought differently.

I wiped the sweat from my brow. "Please tell me that you didn't do that to all of them. It'll be hard enough just getting those down here without having to worry about making a mess."

"Just the one," Noire said, hoisting a bucket over the edge. I grabbed it from the bottom and walked it over to the rocks by my stash, looking like those women in paintings who carry large baskets on their head.

"I'm going to check...on something else," Marisa said, moving upwind.

As I hauled off eight more buckets one by one, I could hear a constant rustling. Must be a rat. Returning to the rock pile, I saw Noire struggle with the wobbling open bucket. "Be careful!" I called out.

Noire unsteadily swung the bloody pail out towards me. Drops flew everywhere, splashing on rock, vines, and even my boots. A quick rinse in the ocean should get those clean again, much to my relief. I stepped underneath the bucket and steadied it with my hands.

A green blur lashed out from the rocks, wrapping itself around the bucket before plunging into the fishy mess. Blood and oil sprayed everywhere as the chum was ripped away from Noire and I. A river of red drenched me in fish guts. For once, my armor wasn't soaked; I'd left that back in the igloo. I still had that sticky crimson sheen that I'd come to expect at the end a mission. Why? Because the universe hates me. I wiped my eyes clean and flicked the excess into the rocks.

Noire screamed as vines pulled the bucket into a thick clump of kudzu vines. More tendrils rolled out, falling onto the blood-soaked sand below. Wherever the plants touched red, they wicked away the mess, leaving white sand.

A shiver ran through me. Spinning about, I dashed away from the writhing vines. Tendrils lashed out and wrapped around my ankles. I fell face first onto the shells and pebbles littering the sticky sand. Scrabbling for purchase, I looked back. The leafy tendrils drained away the blood from my pants.

Something bit into my leg, as though someone scraped sandpaper across my skin before clamping down. I screamed once, and the vines pulled on my, dragging me towards that thicket against the rocks. My second scream was louder and shriller. I fumbled with a multitool that I shook out of its nylon sheath. It slid from my slick fingers. I was dragged away before I could reach it.

Marisa ran towards me, cupping an object in her hands. "Get down!" She pointed a wooden block in my general direction. Eight trigrams etched one her elemental furnace glowed white. Flame gushed out, burning through the kudzu by my feet in second.

"Be careful!" I shrieked, rolling my oil-soaked body away from both the plant and the fire. I cringed; those shells underneath me were sharp!

The witch marched past me, still hurling great jets of flame. Bright yellow fire lashed against the rock pile as she burned out the kudzu thicket. Even the white pail melted under her assault. She walked down the rock pile. Wherever kudzu grew, she seared the rocks clean.

Noire donned a thick set of work gloves and scrambled down the popping rocks. "Are you okay?" She rolled me onto my side into the medical rescue position. The black-haired kappa looked me up and down and threw up her hands. "I won't be able to tell if any of this is yours." She tried to scrub her gloves clean in sand. Instead, she turned her black gloves white.

I sat up and rubbed my hands together. It hurt, but a small stream of rock and shell fragments dropped from my hands. Wincing, I patted myself down. "If I had more than bruises or scrapes, we'd know it by now."

"You've got a friend," Noire said with a scowl. She took hold of my foot and pointed to the vine entangling it. A myriad of thin wiry hairs poked through my pants. Nitori worked her gloved fingers around one tendril and broke the vine. Blood oozed from the end. "We've got to get this off of you." She tugged on the vine.

Marisa later told me that I'd make a great scream queen, whatever that means. All I know is that _hurt_. Imagine someone ripping tiny hooks out of my flesh, and you'll get the idea. That vine didn't want to let go.

"I'm getting the first aid bag and the sat phone," Noire said. "I want to run this by Patchouli and Reisen."

"Can I at least rinse this gunk off?

* * *

><p>It had taken a while for Noire to tie a tablet into the sat phone, but by the time Marisa had returned from sterilizing the beach for a kilometer around us, we'd established the video link. I'd like to say that Reisen talked Noire through a complicated procedure to remove the vines from my leg. She tried, but it was easier just to rip it off. I'm glad they got me drunk first, but I'm never going to be able to drink bourbon again.<p>

Noire held up the vines in front of the tablet's camera with a pair of tweezers. "Any idea what this really is?"

"It looks like kudzu," Patchouli said, pushing Reisen out of the frame. The librarian shrugged. "What do you expect from me, taxonomic classification? I'm an alchemist, not a botanist. "

"I can run it by Yuuka or Eirin if you save a sample," Reisen said, stepping in front of Patchi.

"Let's try Eirin first," Marisa said, helping me sit up. "I don't want to see the Garden of the Sun filled with those vines."

"Make it two samples," Reimu said, wrenching the camera back in Gensokyo off its base and aiming at herself. "We might be able to collect PUFF on it." Normally, I'd recognize that as the bounty system that pays us for ending the types of monsters that send the humans on rampages that kill innocent monsters and youkai, but the only PUFF I recognized then was a magic dragon. I think Marisa dropped some mushrooms in that bourbon when I wasn't looking.

"It's pretty easy to kill with fire," Marisa said. Most monsters were, to the point where the unofficial first law of monster hunting stated that when all else fails, kill it with fire. She leaned closer to the tablet. "We only found it by accident, though. We never knew it was there."

"Think you can find it again?"

"Perhaps."

"I'll have Alice draw up a contract on this vampire kudzu. You might have some more work down there," Reimu said. She tilted her head and looked at me. "Get her out of that mess and cleaned up. Meanwhile, I need to make a phone call."

* * *

><p>Waiting for a clean bill of health seemed silly to me. What's the point of waiting to see if I turn into a monster when I'm already one? I'm pretty sure that if I was going to turn into a leafy mess that only Yuuka would love, I would have done so by now. Still, it's nice to know Reimu cares. She brought over the medical staff from Tsukishima, the same ones who treated me the last time I got hurt in these islands and the only people who've treated kappas in this time zone.<p>

At least the wait brought me something I haven't had on this island; solitude It's a rare commodity on such a small island, and rarer still when Marisa keeps on dragging me to Rumrunners every night. Even the sterile hospital room with a bed harder than concrete couldn't dampen that enthusiasm.

I pulled out my tablet and hopped back up on the bed. I swiped my thumb across the screen and a world map unfurled. Diamond Xs studded the map. Japan had a lower score compared to America, China, Europe, and even some areas of Africa. Zooming in on my homeland, I recognized a few new marks, one only kilometers away from Gensokyo.

A list scrolled in front of me. Hobgoblins in Nagano, angry poltergeists, a rampaging jiang shi, that aswang Kasen's team chased down in Yokohama. All monster attacks . My eyes widened . How the hell did a chupacabra from Mexico make its way to Mahora, Japan? No undead outbreaks, even though monster sightings were on the rise.

That little traitorous bitch of a necromancer went to ground. I'd find her. That hobby of hers would give her away. I just had to find the right event.

In Hokkaido, an entire small village disappeared without a trace. The buildings were still there, complete with tables with meals ready for dinner, but people and pets vanished. Strange tunnels were found nearby, and the brave souls that entered them never returned. I dragged that into a special folder, and the X in Hokkaido turned red.

Someone knocked on my door. I shut off my tablet as slid it under my pillow. "Come in."

Marisa walked in, accompanied by one of the Tsukishima doctors. "Hey," she said, grinning. "He says you're human." I scowled at the witch. "You know what I mean."

"I wouldn't have put it quite that way," the doctor said, coughing into his fist. I rolled my eyes. Is everyone going to make jokes about what I really am? "But I don't see any signs of infection."

"Or infestation," Marisa deadpanned.

"Anyway," the doctor cut in. "Keep the leg dry and wrapped when you go out. Please, try not to go into the water. I'll get a nurse to check you out and you'll be good to go."

As soon as her left, Marisa's smile faded. "St. Vincent's Island spotted a giant shark an hour ago. Well, some of them think it's a shark, other's a squid." She slid me a map of the atoll and pointed to an island between Tsukishima and Matamoros.

"Anyone hurt?" I said, sitting up straight.

She shook her head. "They evacuated the beaches as soon as they saw it."

"It's staying close. We're in its hunting grounds."

"If it heads to Ralik again, it's going to feast. After seeing that thing, I'm not sure that shark trick magic or whatever will work." Marisa held my gaze as she spoke. "We're going back out there tomorrow and we're staying out there until we get that thing."

* * *

><p>The sea was a bloody mess like those bad horror movies Remilia loves to laugh at brought to life. Last night, Noire had bought, begged, and outright stolen over 600 liters of liquefied fish, blood, oils, and offal. It was a shame to see all of that kappa stew cast onto the waves. The slick reached past the white breaking waves that separated the shallow rock shelf waters from the deeper Pacific Ocean.<p>

I raised a sledgehammer high into the air, and drove a steel spike into the sand and rock on the shore. It took a while to hammer it flat. Setting the attached reel to spin freely, I tied one end of the braided line to an improvised sparkler harpoon.

Noire shrieked. Not in fear, but like she was at a Birds and Beasts concert. She pointed out towards the waters where nurse sharks thrashed and churned their way through the shallows, even up at the water line. Loud clicks punctuated the air as jaws clamped down on floating fish chunks. Normally these nurse sharks so docile, you'd have to stick a hand down one's throat just to get it to bite. Now, the wise kappa who wanted to count to twenty on her fingers and toes wouldn't set foot in with the blood-drunk fish.

"That's not natural, is it?" Marisa aid. She had set up Reisen's sniper rifle near another of the steel spikes. Unlike yesterday, we made no attempt to hide anything. In a frenzy, the lusca wouldn't care.

"The sharks or Noire?" I asked.

My assistant carried a white bucket to the water's edge and set it down. She tipped it over and a red flood surged into the waves. Sharks beelined over, sucking up the fishy mess as the tide swept the chum out to sea. Two nurse sharks even swam up onto the shore, sticking their snouts inside the overturned pail.

Noire laughed freely. "Can I keep one?"

If I could have figured out how to get on the plane, I would have said yes.

"I'm more partial to black cats myself," Marisa said with a shrug. She wrapped a handkerchief around her mouth and nose.

"Don't let Ran hear you say that," I said, watching the frenzy in the water. The two nurse sharks slide back into the water, joining the churning shallows. Noire ran back towards the stacked buckets of chum.

"That's got to last all day," Marisa said, the cloth muffling her voice. She stacked decks of spell cards next to the Barrett rifle. "Man, this place stinks."

"We still have ten," Noire said with a pout, carrying the bucket away as she spoke.

The sharks left. One moment, they splashed together in a swirling mob, the next, they sped away in all directions like rings of danmaku.

Noire's eyes widened and she spun around and ran the bucket back. Running isn't quite the proper word; she had settled into that high speed shuffle people do when overburdened.

"Drop it!" Marisa shouted. She picked up a spear gun and fiddled with the reel by her feet.

Noire tiptoed to a stop and set the bucket down. A swift kick tipped it over, spilling blood and guts away from the water, splashing over the rest of the bait.

I cringed; like an idiot, I'd left my gear over there while I was setting up. As usual, cleaning off my gear at the end of a mission would be murder. Although, if the scarlet-smeared landscape was anything to judge by, this one was going to set new records for misery. Worse still, that spill left me with just what I had on me for functional gear.

One kappa-kludged Saturday Night Special of a spear gun, one M4 with a full rifleman's load on my belt, a deck of useless water-based spell cards strapped to my wrist, a diving knife on my thigh. Not exactly the best weapons for shark hunting. Oh, and one sledgehammer. At best, I'd be a quick decoy.

We spread out to our places, each with a spear gun tied to a reel tamped into the ground.

The first ripple swung around the sole pillar in the ocean. I raised the spear gun to my shoulder and tracked the knife's edge of a fin through the sights. The black chimera threw itself out of the depths and into the shallows.

Normally it would have fled. We made no efforts to hide ourselves or our firearms from the typically cautious beast. However, the siren call of liter of fresh blood drove it into a frenzy. It would rend and tear anything that remotely looked tasty, including two kappa delicacies far away from their native rivers. (Yes, and Marisa, too. Why should I bother to mention her when everyone knows humans are monster crack?)

Right now, that crazed sharktopus had decided it wanted a bite of Noire. Charging through the waters like a crow tengu in the sky, it hurled itself through ever shallower water until it could no longer swim. Then it pulled its way across the beach by its squid-like appendages. Nothing that massive should run so fast, especially without legs.

Noire stood her ground admirably, even if she looked a bit shaky and pale. Not that anyone would blame her. She jerked her trigger, and her harpoon tumbled end over end into the water. Another flew straight and true, but sailed over the lusca's back. Once again, Marisa proved why we kept her to her shotgun whenever possible.

Meanwhile, I had dropped into the prone and steadied myself. A quick breath out, and I squeezed the trigger. My harpoon, complete with its braided line, embedded itself deep into the flesh below the rear dorsal fin. The reel spun freely, sounding like a bicycle chain in rapid motion. Rolling to my feet, I flailed about until my hand slapped against the reel. With a push of a button, a ratchet set, ending the reel's spin. It would no longer feed line to the sharktopus.

The lusca spun about and charged me instead. I zigzagged down the beach, but it wasn't long before I could smell ocean rot over the miasma of drying blood. I rocketed ten meters into the air just before two tentacles could grab me.

I trembled as I hovered high in the air. Those tentacles were built like a squids, complete with rows of jagged teeth hidden inside the suckers. If one wrapped around me, I couldn't escape before the beast tore me apart.

Marisa emptied her Barrett at the fish, each shot sounding like loud metallic popcorn. For all of the fury, red only fountained from the beast's side once. She swore as she leapt to her feet and pointed her elemental furnace at the fish. A Master Spark lashed out and steam rose wherever the light struck. The shark writhed and ran for Marisa. Clouds of buckshot and Noire's rifle fire bit into its hide. Blood-crazed and hurt, it thundered across the rocks.

The creature lunged at Marisa, tentacles splayed out in a fleshy net. Marisa took flight. While I found refuge in the skies, she wove around and under tentacles, tail, and teeth, showering danmaku whenever possible.

Even as hot embers sizzled against its hide, the sharktopus still pivoted about on its appendages like a deranged tope. Jaws snapped and tentacles whipped around, yet the witch managed to avoid the writhing mess.

"Get out of there!" I shouted, watching the spectacle through my scope. She kept on getting in the way of a clear shot. I didn't know how she kept from getting dizzy. A bull-jumper would shy away from some of the close calls. I didn't think she flew so well without her broom.

Spinning and scattering stars in her wake, Marisa shot down the beach towards Noir. My fellow kappa's eyes widened and then she vanished. I shook my head in disbelief. What good could Optical Camouflage do against a creature that could smell you miles away?

Now that I had a clear shot, I fired once. The shot must have gone wide; the kick sent me spiraling. After my tumble, I dove to the ground and landed on my feet.

Meanwhile, Marisa flew to the end of the Shark Pit. The monster fish barreled behind her, until it was jerked back off of its running tentacles and flopped against the shore. The line tying it to the its anchor snapped taunt.

Marisa skidded to a stop and loaded another drum into her shotgun. The lusca lunged against the line, snapping like a leashed dog at the end of its chain. She pelted it with shot, blowing chunks from the tentacles lashing out towards her.

I walked my own fire from the tail to the ring of appendages by the its pectoral fins. Between Marisa and I, we were hurting the fish, but we'd run out of ammunition before it would fall. Assuming the lusca didn't rip free of the harpoon snaring it in place. Who even knew what Noire was up to? I kept watching for but never saw that sweet spot where the skull met the spinal cord.

Silver fell from the sky like an angry god's thunderbolt, piercing the shark's skin behind the skull. A load electric pop snapped through the air. I recognized that sound. A capacitor had discharged, violently.

The lusca collapsed as sure as someone had just turned it off. The limp mass of fish meat and calamari slumped into the sand. Marisa kept her shotgun pointed at the beast and waited. Some monsters played possum when hurt.

I sprinted towards the fish. No muscles trembled at all, no breathing (lusca can breathe air), nothing.

Noire decloaked and dropped from the sky. She stared at the fallen sharktopus and shook her head. "That was a lousy throw." She pointed towards the harpoon. It missed the spinal column by a few centimeters. Fortunately, she had grabbed one of my improvised sparkler harpoons when she was invisible. The electrical surge was close enough to the nervous system to scramble its brain. A proper kappa hunter wouldn't have needed that edge. Then again, most proper kappa hunters went up against much smaller lusca.

"Someone call Ms. Jones for the clean up," Marisa said. She looked out at the crimson beach. "We're going to need help."

I sighed and reached for my phone.

* * *

><p>It only took an hour to grab the pictures, the tissue samples, and the after action reports needed to prove a fulfilled bounty and contract. (Regarding that after action report, we quickly came to the same conclusion on what we should have done differently. <em>Everything<em>!) However, cleaning up the beach and out gear of blood, brass, chum, and the general litter of the fight took two days, even with police and fire departments assisting. And, yes, it was every bit as miserable as I assumed. Your average island in the Middle of Nowhere, Pacific Ocean doesn't have the special solvents I normally use. I had to fall back on the universal solvent, elbow grease.

Noire and I never did get our traditional post-lusca kappa fish fry. Some alphabet soup agency I wasn't familiar with dragged away the carcass just after we got the tissue samples we needed. We made up for it by eating Rumrunners completely out of tuna steaks.

* * *

><p>I waited outside the airport building with a heavy rucksack and two duffels in hand. The cathedral of rust could have used another could of paint. Whoever had complained about watching paint dry never had to watch rust spread. Sure, there were the usual take onegive one novels on a shelf inside the terminal, but I preferred to read Clancy's _Debt of Honor_ in the original Japanese.

At least it was early enough in the morning that I could wear my usual utility dress without sweating though it. I had to leave my key in a duffel, however. It plays merry hell with metal detectors and for some reason security folks don't like that. Still, it would be nice to return to a land where I didn't need a shower as soon as I stepped out of the shower.

Don't get me wrong, Matamoros is a lovely place to visit whenever I'm not chasing down a hundred million yen worth of killer fish. It's still just a small island, though, and the charm quickly fades. I'm not a saltwater swimmer, after all, and the bar scene at Rumrunners got old two days ago. The job's done, time to move on to...other things. As soon as the next flight leaves, that is. It's only four hours away.

"Nitori!" Noire waved as she ran over. "I'm glad I found you."

"What's wrong?"

"My fellow kappa beamed as she grabbed hold of a duffel. "More like what's right. Marisa just signed a contract to clear the island of vampire kudzu."

I feigned a smile. "You get to be bait this time."

She grabbed hold of my second duffel and dragged it and me away from the airport. "And I've chartered a tuna boat for the afternoon. We can even feed the sharks in the marina when we get back..."

Looks like I'll need to get a refund for my ticket to Hokkaido.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes<strong>

Thanks to Captain Vulcan for reviewing an early draft.

Noire is supposed to be the black-haired kappa from the kappa mob in Wild and Horned Hermit.

This isn't the final chapter of _Portent_. I know. I broke another promise. However, when I was writing the last chapter according to my outline, a character made a decision that shattered the plot completely. At the same time, I saw a picture of a lusca and three thousand words in a day later, _Frenzy_ started taking shape. I'll still finish Portent, I've just got to piece the plot and foreshadowing back together.

It's hard to believe that I've been writing Touhou fics for two years now. Thanks everyone who preread, reviewed, and most especially those who have read my writing during that time. I can't thank you all enough, not without gushing.


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